


lightning rod

by flybbfly, PuckB



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 23:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11679720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flybbfly/pseuds/flybbfly, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PuckB/pseuds/PuckB
Summary: Neil transfers to a new team in a new city, so naturally needs a new apartment. After a fruitless search for a studio on Craigslist, he ends up with much more than he bargained for: three roommates, parties, and maybe even a home.





	lightning rod

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a New Girl AU but now it's just what it is.
> 
> The incredible art (you'll know it when you see it) is by puckb/[coldcigarettes](http://coldcigarettes.tumblr.com).

Transferring to a team in New York seems like a good idea for the entirety of Neil's flight to LaGuardia. It seems like a good idea when Neil picks up his checked luggage—exy equipment, mostly—and hails a cab to the hotel his new team has him in until he finds an apartment. It even seems like a good idea when Matt calls him, minutes after Neil has checked into the hotel and dropped all his stuff just inside. 

“Yeah.”

“Get there safe?” Matt says. “Make sure you check out—” and then lists a bunch of places he probably knows Neil is never going to visit. “Just skip Times Square altogether, you'd hate it. How's the hotel?”

Neil looks around: a bed, a TV, a nice little sitting area. 

“It's a hotel,” Neil says. 

Matt laughs. “Do you know where you're going to live yet?”

“Not a clue.”

“Okay, don't take this the wrong way,” Matt says. “But you definitely shouldn't live alone.”

Neil sits down on the bed and flips through the menu of amenities, trying to decide if he should go out for a run or just down to the gym. “Why not?”

“Because, dude. You're _you_. If you live alone, your literal entire life will just be exy.”

“What's wrong with that?”

“Oh, man,” Matt says, and then does that embarrassed little laugh he does sometimes when Neil says things that are both sad and funny. “You need, like, a social life, you know? You can't just wake up, exy, go to bed.”

“I can if it's my job.”

“Haven't you heard of work-life balance?”

Well—exy _is_ his life, and he mainly relies on it to survive. 

“No.”

“Okay,” Matt says. “Okay. Listen. You know Kevin Day?”

“Do I know—do I know _Kevin Day_?” Neil says. “Do _you_ know Kevin Day?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Matt says. “You know Alvarez? She went to college with Jeremy Knox, and Knox is—”

“—Day's only pro exy friend, right,” Neil says. “So?”

“He lives in Brooklyn with a couple of roommates and rumor has it they're looking to fill a room,” Matt says. “I'll get his number.”

Neil weighs his options. On the one hand, he'd be living with Kevin Day. On the other hand, he'd be living with _Kevin Day_ , the only person in exy other than maybe Jean Moreau who experienced the Moriyamas first-hand before Neil personally helped dismantle their exy empire. It's a mess Neil's been avoiding since his freshman year of college, and bringing it back to the forefront now sounds like the worst way to kick off his career. Living with Kevin would be good for the exy, bad for his life expectancy.

“I don't know,” Neil says. “Maybe I'll just look on Craigslist.”

“Craigslist. Seriously. You're turning down your literal idol for Craigslist.”

“We're on rival teams,” Neil says. “It'd be weird.”

“Weird,” Matt echoes. “It's _Kevin Day_. That's like me saying I'd turn down living with Drake and Bruce Willis circa _Die Hard_.”

“Who is that?”

“Which one?”

“That was more than one person?” Neil says. 

“You're hopeless,” Matt says. “Call me in the morning.”

“Yes, Coach,” Neil says.

“Was that a joke? Really? New York's changed you, buddy, who knew you could make jokes?” He laughs again. “Goodnight, dude. Get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.”

“Right,” Neil says. “Night.”

*

New York City has two pro exy teams: Queens-based New York Leviathans and Brooklyn-based New York Bobcats. Kevin Day is starting striker for the Leviathans despite sustaining an injury that most people thought would end his career when he was in college. He transferred to another school, did PT, and switched to his right hand—no problem for the best striker exy's ever seen.

Neil is the Bobcats' new sub striker, joining a bench that features four other strikers. He probably won't get much game time, but he gets a paycheck and to practice with some of the best in the game, and that's enough for him for now, considering he never thought he'd make it past high school.

The Bobcats' court is a Brooklyn arena that is mostly dedicated to big rockstar tours in the off-season. He hated the idea when he first heard it, and when Neil steps onto the floor for the first time, he hates it more. Exy courts are for exy and should stay that way—anything else feels like gross violation. 

“Alright, team,” Coach Vieira says, clapping Neil on the back to introduce him to everyone else. “This is our new striker, Neil Josten. He rounds out the team, and he'll be the last transfer we make unless something else comes up before the season starts. Sub for now, but he's competing for the starting spot, so don't get complacent.”

That's news to Neil, who didn't even read his contract before signing it. He thought he was meant to be a bench-warmer, a seat-filler, a number to pad the roster in case of emergency and maybe come on at ends of games when everyone's legs were tired. 

It thrills him as much as it terrifies him, and he stares back at his teammates coolly, trying to look confident. 

They smile back at him with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but when they file onto the court to start warm ups, some of his teammates catch up with him to ask him questions—mostly it's mundane stuff, “Do you really run a four minute mile? Why do you play _exy_?” “Your goal against USC in the final last year was incredible, shame you guys lost, but we knew we wanted you here immediately after we saw that.” “Do you know where you're living? I heard Kevin Day's looking for a roommate, you know.” “Whatever you do, don't live in Williamsburg. It's gone corporate.” “Shut up, Morgan, you're sponsored by fucking _Nike_.”

When they ask—which of course they eventually do—about the shit that went down with his father, Neil just says, “He's dead, so.” 

No one presses. He still has that reputation for having a bad attitude, it seems. 

Well. 

He's not complaining.

*

Craigslist it is.

Neil's salary is all right even after the Moriyamas take their cut, but he's not one to splurge on himself, especially because money isn't infinite and gets tight fast when situations get tricky. So instead of picking the nicest one-bedroom within walking distance of the court, he sorts through a few studios on subway lines that are close enough and figures he can jog if he has to. 

So he picks a few places, calls a few numbers, and sets up a few apartment viewings.

New York City real estate is notoriously brutal, but Neil sort of expects it to be an exaggeration. After all, he's been kidnapped and tortured by his crime lord father, spent half his life running away from a gang with his violent mother, seen people die in front of him, and, once or twice, made bodies disappear. He has a high bar for brutal.

But fuck, New York City real estate is actually goddamn brutal.

The first place looks just like the pictures, but when he gets there, the dude jacks up the price to twice the amount.

“It's a trendy neighborhood, bro,” he tells Neil. “This is a good price.”

“It was a thousand dollars cheaper in your ad.”

“Nah, bro, that was just the security deposit.” 

“Okay,” Neil says. “That's not what it said on the ad, but okay. I'm not interested.”

The guy opens his mouth to say something else. Neil doesn't give him the chance.

The second place isn't a studio at all—it's a walk-in closet someone has converted to a bedroom. Fourteen hundred a month.

“Fourteen hundred a month for a literal closet,” Matt says when Neil tells him, barely able to hold in his laughter. “Dude, I honestly cannot believe you. Don't go through Craigslist. Trust your friend who is actually from New York. If you're not going to take the Kevin Day advice, get a broker! Get, like, a guy who actually knows what he's doing. You know where you wanna live? You have a budget? Let me ask my mom—”

“It's fine,” Neil says. “I'm seeing another place today.”

The third place is half the size advertised on Craigslist, which would be fine for Neil because he's pretty small and doesn't have much stuff, except that it requires a full background and credit check, and the entire concept has him crawling out of his skin even if he is almost entirely legit these days. 

The fourth place has roaches. 

The fifth place is an illegal basement apartment with insulation forcing its way out of the cracks in the walls. 

The sixth place ends up being some guy trying to steal Neil's phone.

“I told you not to look for a place alone,” Matt says during their call that night. 

Neil glares up at the ceiling of his hotel room, the sight of which he's quickly grown sick of. He supposes he hadn't realized how much he appreciated being able to have more than one room to live in. It's the kind of luxury he never would've grown used to when he was on the run with his mother, but he's not fourteen anymore, so—

“Maybe you're right,” Neil says. “I'll look for roommates.”

“I'll help!”

“I do not want your help,” Neil says. “I'll look on Craigslist.”

“Have you learned,” Matt says, “ _literally_ nothing. From the last two weeks of your life?”

“Two weeks?” Neil says. “Already?”

“Get a calendar,” Matt says. “Even, like, Google Calendar. I promise they're not tracking your movements. Or, like, if they are, they're benevolent. Remember 'Don't be evil'?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Neil can hear the smile in his voice. “How's the pre-season going?”

“Well,” Neil says. “Obviously Lucia Gonzalez is no Dan Wilds, but she's a good captain anyway, and Abernathy's a good goalie.”

“How are you playing?”

“Fine,” Neil says. “Not good enough, obviously, but—”

“Oh, fuck off.” Neil can practically see Matt rolling his eyes at the phone. “You're the best striker in the world, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“Being unrealistic is not helpful.”

“Who says I'm being unrealistic?” Matt says. “If you haven't found an apartment by the end of the weekend, I'm setting up an appointment with my mom's agent.”

Neil gives up. “Okay. Fine.”

“Fine again,” Matt says. “Find a place! I'm going to bed.”

“Night,” Neil says, and starts looking for places with roommates.

*

The ad reads, _US: three fun dudes being bros in a killer bk apt that should cost twice as much except we're desperate for a fourth roomie so it's actually way under market! YOU: someone who will pay the bills on time and not ask weird questions! US: an athletic type, a social worker, and a certified young profesh who love to chill out heterosexually, play video games, watch sports, and talk about girls! YOU: hopefully someone who doesn't say weird things like what I just wrote over there, ha! You'd never know I work in marketing based on how bad this ad is._

Neil calls, and the voice that answers sounds friendly enough, though Neil knows that's not ever much to go on.

“Hi,” he says. “I'm Neil. I just moved to the city,” which is a rookie mistake, Matt would scold him for it, he's asking to get scammed, “and I'm looking for a place, preferably with roommates.”

“Great!” the guy on the other end says. “I'm Nicky. You won't miss out on roommates at our place. Actually, it's kind of off-putting for strangers how many of us there are. That's why the room's so cheap—it's actually really nice! Pretty big, great location, amenities, all that stuff. There's a gym and a rooftop lounge, so you know, pretty upscale for the area. Sorry, I talk too much, that might also be off-putting. You want to come see it?”

“Yeah, I get out of work early afternoon,” Neil says. “When can I come by?”

“I might be out a little late,” Nicky says. “Could you do, like, seven? I'd rather you come when I'm there.”

“Why?” Neil says. “What's wrong with the other two?”

“They're fine, they're just,” Nicky says, and is Neil paranoid, or is there a hesitation before he finishes that sentence, “introverts.”

“Oh,” Neil says. “Okay. I'll see you tomorrow, then?”

“Perfect,” Nicky says. “I'm the tall, cute one. Call me when you get here.”

*

He is tall, Neil notes when Nicky greets him in the lobby of what actually is a nice apartment building—a doorman building in Park Slope, which should cost way more than it does, which means something must be extremely fucking wrong with it.

“You must be Neil!” Nicky says, leading Neil to elevator. “Welcome to our humble abode—we're actually pretty high up, but we're facing a building so there's no view, but there's a ladder up to the roof from the fire escape, and technically we're supposed to go up from some staircase or elevator somewhere, but rules are meant to be broken, right? It's a great place for parties in the summer, but obviously the fire escapes freeze in the winter, and it's like, what if there was a fire? Would the ice melt, or would we just die?”

“Uh,” Neil says. 

The elevator doors close in front of them, and Neil considers how closed this space is and how very much without a weapon he has to be these days. He'd feel more comfortable with even a small knife, really, just a nice little thing in a sheath at his waist or something, but there are so many damn metal detectors in the city and getting caught with an illegal blade would probably definitely make the papers, which is exactly what he's supposed to be trying _not_ to do. Maybe he should get a license to carry.

“Sorry, sorry,” Nicky is saying. “I talk a lot when I'm around quiet people, which I am kind of a weird amount. So a little bit about us—I work in marketing, so I do the whole F-train commute bullshit, which sucks. My boyfriend lives in Germany, and I'm actually looking to transfer to the Stuttgart office of my company within about a year, just after the twins get a little more settled. That was the joke in the ad, the heterosexual thing, you know, because straightness is bullshit, right?” He grins at Neil, waiting for a response, but Neil can't come up with anything other than a weak smile. “What do you do?”

The doors of the elevator clang open, and Nicky leads the way down a labyrinth hallway.

“I play exy,” Neil says. “Bobcats.”

“Oh, wow, seriously? That's such a wild coincidence, one of my roommates actually plays exy.” Nicky pushes open the front door. “Maybe you've heard of him? Kevin Day?”

“Hi,” Kevin Day says, looking irritably up at Neil and then blinking in recognition. Neil gets ready to turn and push past Nicky and just fucking run, but then Kevin says, “Neil Josten? Bobcats' new starting striker? I tried to sign you, you know, but your agent said you didn't want to go further north than Virginia.”

“I didn't,” Neil says. “But I didn't have a lot of options. It was the Bobcats or D.C., and I'm not a huge fan of the area. And it's substitute striker.”

“Not for long, unless you maintain that attitude. You're living here?” He looks at Nicky, frowning slightly. “Might be a little odd, in terms of optics, since the Bobcats are our rivals, but if Andrew approves—”

“More like if Neil approves of Andrew,” Nicky says. “Sorry, Neil, I should've warned you—our other roommate isn't as friendly as me or as exy-obsessed as Kevin.”

“Andrew?” Neil says. 

Andrew Minyard. It must be. Andrew Minyard isn't famous unless you've been following Kevin Day's exy career with a magnifying glass for years—played college exy with Kevin, had a few excellent games and a lot of terrible ones, went on to be a social worker. Neil didn't know they were roommates.

“Yeah, he's here, he's just being creepy. He'll want to meet you before you sign anything, obviously. Answer whatever he asks, he's just vigilant, don't worry. I know it comes off as invasive, but—” Nicky shrugs. “That's Andrew. Don't try to shake his hand, he doesn't like being touched.”

As if summoned, Andrew makes his appearance. He's shorter than Neil remembers from the videos he's watched on YouTube, but maybe that's just because he's not in goalie gear or doing anything particularly athletic. He's just standing there in casual all-black clothing, arms crossed, giving Neil a cool once-over.

“Hi,” Neil says. “I'm Neil.”

Andrew just stares back at him.

“He doesn't talk much,” Nicky says. “Let me give you a quick tour, and then we can talk lease and all that good stuff.”

He gives Neil a quick tour, and then they talk lease and all that good stuff. He tells Neil to look over it for the night and call him in the morning, and Neil nods and says he will.

Then he goes to his hotel room and quietly freaks out.

Living with Kevin would be so, so stupid. It puts a target on both their backs; it feels like shoving both of them into the same cage so that they're easier to kill. Neil has been his version of safe for a few years, but his salary is still being funneled to the main Moriyama family—is the same true for Kevin? What will Ichirou say, if he finds out? When he finds out?

Neil forces himself to take a breath. There's nothing in their terms explicitly banning Neil from living with Kevin. If anything, living with Kevin will create some kind of interesting narrative, maybe please Ichirou more. It won't hurt. If it does, Neil has his savings and his contacts—disappearing won't be easy, and he'll have to do it more completely this time, another continent and another language, but he'll do it if he has to. 

It's fine, Neil tells himself.

He signs the lease.

*

“I can't believe you're moving in with Kevin Fucking Day after all,” Matt says. “I mean, the _Son of fucking Exy_ , and I know he's not the same as he was before, but shit, dude! I knew you'd cave.”

“I told you, I didn't know it was his apartment,” Neil says, sitting on the edge of his bed and turning on speaker phone. “It was just random.”

“You know what they call that, Josten? _Fate_. It was meant to be. When are you moving in?” 

“This weekend. Coach says I need to have an actual place to live before the season starts, and the guy who lives with Kevin didn't seem to care about the official start of the month thing at all.”

“Are you excited?”

“Why would I be? It's just an apartment.”

“Dude,” Matt says. “You're living with Kevin Day. You're an exy nut. He's on your rival team. That's something to be excited about.”

Neil tries to feel excited and not just anxious.

“I'll try,” he says. “Tell Dan I said hi.”

“I'll tell her you said something interesting and fun.”

“No, just hi works.”

Matt laughs. “You're right. She wouldn't believe you could ever think up anything interesting or fun.”

“You wouldn't able to think of anything anyway.” Neil stretches out in his hotel bed and flips the TV to ESPN. There are basketball highlights on now, but the little ticker on the side of the screen promises exy pre-season news in the next few minutes.

Matt is laughing, and there's a ringing in Neil's room. It takes him a second to place it as the hotel phone.

“I'll talk to you tomorrow,” Neil tells Matt, and hangs up to answer the room phone.

“Mr. Josten, this is the front desk,” a pleasant but harried voice chirps at him. “You have a guest down here. His name is Andrew Minyard. Should I send him up?”

What does Andrew Minyard want with him now? They're about to see more of each other than either of them could really ever want to. Can't he wait?

“Sure,” Neil says, but someone is already knocking on his door. 

“I'm sorry,” the attendant says quickly. “He got in the elevator as soon as I picked up the phone—”

“It's fine,” Neil says, but if Andrew Minyard is about to murder him, Neil is definitely going to call the front desk back and give them a piece of his mind first. He's pretty sure he remembers something about Andrew Minyard having some kind of shady record. 

Neil opens the door anyway. “Hi.”

Andrew looks him up and down, the same cool, blank gaze from the day before.

“Do you talk, or …?”

“Obviously,” Andrew says. He has a supremely unaffected-sounding voice, like the concept of being interested in things itself bores him.

He also has apparently no boundaries, because he shoves bodily past Neil into the room and immediately goes for the minibar to make himself a drink, then comes back to face Neil like they're in some kind of standoff. Neil half-expects Andrew to bust out a couple of guns, cowboy-style, but he doesn't, just stands there, too stiff to be casual.

“Do you believe in coincidences, Neil Josten?” Andrew says. 

On ESPN, they finally get to the exy story. Jeremy Knox and Kevin Day's grinning faces stare out of the TV. Neil hastily clicks it off.

“Sure,” he says.

“I don't,” Andrew says. He's wearing a t-shirt, normal for summer, but he has on thick black wristbands—very much not normal, especially not for summer in this city. “You just happened to choose the one Craigslist listing that also featured an exy superstar?”

“It's complicated,” Neil says. He affects the casual sports bro voice he perfected in college. “Took me a while to find a place, actually. I toured a lot of studios.”

“Studios,” Andrew repeats. “And yet here you are, with three roommates.”

“It's a good deal and a big apartment within walking distance from my job.”

“With Kevin.”

“Yeah,” Neil says. “But I didn't know that.”

“Like I said,” Andrew says. “I do not believe in coincidences. Who are you?”

“Bobcats' new sub,” Neil says. “That's it. All I do is exy. We might've played each other in college a couple of times, actually.”

“I looked you up,” Andrew says. “Everything about you on the internet says you have a bad attitude and a troubling relationship with certain east coast gangs.”

Neil swallows and lies through his teeth. “That was my father. I turned him and his people in to the FBI.”

“But not the Moriyamas.”

“I wasn't aware of the extent of their relationship with my father,” Neil says. 

It's true—it's not until after the Butcher was dead that Ichirou turned up outside Neil's dorm and told him to get in the car, explained everything about the Butcher wanting to sell Neil to the Ravens, and told Neil that he'd kill him for putting so many Moriyama men behind bars.

“When you saw Kevin in our apartment, you looked like you wanted to turn and run.”

How would Andrew know? He wasn't even there. “I was starstruck.”

“Liar.” Andrew stares at Neil like he can see right into Neil's thoughts, like he can see the massive chunk of Neil's paycheck that goes straight into some Moriyama shell charity. “You didn't want to be near him.”

He didn't. It's true. Neil's impulse was—like it so frequently is—to run. Partly because he still associates Kevin so fully with the Moriyamas and thinks of the Moriyamas so completely as the only living parts of his father even though it's the other way around, but also partly because Kevin is terrifying. The best striker to ever strike. He can't explain it to someone like Andrew, who even when he played exy so obviously didn't give a shit about it, but it's _Kevin Day_. He's not just a celebrity. If there was ever a human personification of exy, it'd be him. 

“You don't add up,” Andrew says.

“I'm not a math problem,” Neil says, perplexed.

Andrew steps dangerously close, finishing his drink. “But I'll still solve you.”

He leaves again.

What the fuck was that.

*

Despite this interaction with Andrew, Neil has a relatively normal move into his new apartment. His room is big-ish, with a lock on the door that he almost trusts. In any case, he's been keeping his binder of contacts and extra money in a safe for the last few years, so aside from anyone getting into his regular possessions, he feels secure enough. It's better than he would've felt in college leaving his dorm, but years of exposure to other people have forced him to accept that most people just do not give enough of a shit about your shit to go through it.

It's also a relatively normal move because no one's home, or at least no one's making any noise. Neil finishes moving before lunchtime and goes grocery shopping, and when he's back there is still no sign of life.

Whatever—they probably all went out last night or something. They aren't his responsibility. Neil sets about making himself lunch and is nearly finished eating it when Nicky finally stumbles into the kitchen, looking godawful and not at all the cheerful business casual young professional Neil has met three times so far.

“Oh, hey,” Nicky says, pouring himself some of the coffee Neil made. “We thought you'd be getting here later, or we would've helped you move. Is there a truck outside or something?”

“No, I'm all done,” Neil says. 

“Really?” Nicky looks around. “There are no boxes or anything.”

“All my exy stuff's at the court already,” Neil says. 

“But what about your stuff stuff?”

“I don't really have any.”

Nicky looks at Neil like that's about the saddest thing he's ever heard.

“Don't worry,” he says, patting Neil's arm. “We'll take you to Bed, Bath, and Beyond.”

Neil opens his mouth to ask Nicky about Andrew showing up to his hotel room, but then he remembers Nicky telling him about Andrew's hyper-vigilance and stops. Nicky was obviously expecting it, maybe even supports it. He might seem normal, but he still lives with that weirdo.

“I don't need anything from Bed, Bath, and Beyond,” Neil says.

“IKEA? Target? I think there's a Target near the Barclays Center, but that's kind of a hike unless Andrew lets us take his car. I think we'd need to take the bus and a train, and like, who wants to do that, right? Unless you have a car?”

“No,” Neil says. 

“Who helped you move in?”

“I took a cab from my hotel.”

Nicky looks around again, frowning. “Just by yourself?”

“Is there something wrong with that?”

“One of us could've helped.”

“I didn't need help,” Neil says.

Nicky gets that weird pitying expression on his face again, but eventually he changes the subject and starts talking about his boyfriend in Germany.

It turns out to be a ruse: “Are you seeing anyone, Neil? No one back home in—where are you from?”

“No,” Neil says. “I don't really date.”

“At all? Man, the world is missing out. Maybe I can set you up with someone.”

Neil makes a face. “I think I'm good.”

Andrew pads into the kitchen, then, wearing pajamas and his wristbands and trademark blank expression. He, too, takes some of the coffee Neil made before pouring himself a bowl of cereal.

“Andrew, we're setting Neil up with someone,” Nicky says. “Look at him, though, he needs someone gentle and sensitive. You know any social workers he could go out with?”

Andrew considers Neil. “Social workers aren't supposed to bring their jobs home.”

“So? You do it with Kevin,” Nicky says. “Someone could do it with Neil. Neil, which way do you swing?”

“Oh,” Neil says, surprised. “You and Kevin—”

“—are old friends,” Andrew says. He watches while Neil loads the dishwasher, apparently waiting for something.

“You don't have to answer if you don't want to,” Nicky says. “But it'll make setting you up easier if you give us a gender or two.”

“What?” Neil says.

“Swinging,” Nicky says. “Not the key party kind. Which direction?”

“Oh. Yeah, no. I don't swing.”

“At all?” Nicky says. “God, the world really is missing out, shit.”

“I thought you had a boyfriend,” Neil says.

“Doesn't mean I don't have eyes and needs.” Nicky finishes his coffee. “So. We going?”

“Where?”

“Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Or, I don't know, maybe Target. Keep up.”

“Oh. I don't really need anything.”

“Neil,” Nicky says. “You're a professional athlete with no stuff. We're going.”

“Target,” Andrew says. “I'm driving.”

He's coming too?

“Terrific,” Nicky says, stealing the rest of Neil's lunch dishes and throwing them haphazardly into the dishwasher. “That's the only time I'll clean up after you, by the way. You get a one day grace period.”

“I wasn't—”

“You talk too much,” Andrew says. “Let's go.”

They go. 

Bewilderingly, it's fine: Andrew drives a car much nicer than Neil expected for someone on a social worker's salary, but then, he also lives in an apartment much nicer than a social worker would typically be able to afford. He doesn't really talk the entire time. Instead, Nicky fills the car up with conversation about everything and nothing, the weather, his boyfriend, his favorite places to vacation and stay-cation, exy.

Then, after asking Neil what he needs and coming up empty, Nicky starts throwing things into Neil's cart without really consulting him, sheets and towels and toiletries. Nicky fully ignores Neil when he says that he'll probably always be showering at the court and adds shaving cream and razors.

“I'm making executive decisions here,” Nicky says. “Do you have a TV? Do you want a TV?”

“I don't really watch TV,” Neil says.

“We pay for like two thousand channels or something,” Nicky says. “And all the streaming services. Like, just get a TV, you're paying for it anyway.” He pauses to look at Neil. “Wait, are you serious? What do you do when you aren't playing exy?”

“He's just like Kevin,” Andrew says. “He probably watches himself playing exy.”

He's not wrong. Neil says, “Do you get all the ESPN channels?”

“Are you asking if Kevin Day, the Son of Exy, pays for ESPN-E?” Nicky says, admiring a TV that is way outside of Neil's price range and anyway looks too big for his bedroom. “Jesus, you really are a lot like him. What about one of these?” He points to a section of smaller ones. “Thirty-two inches, we can mount it on your wall, and they're only like a hundred dollars if you're considering being cheap—”

“Okay,” Neil says.

“You are easy to bully,” Andrew says. 

“Right?” Nicky says. “Buy us a new TV, too—joking, joking, I know not everyone is on Kevin's fifteen mil—”

“Not even close,” Neil informs him, though he doesn't know how much of that salary Kevin actually gets to keep. “Why does he live with so many roommates if he makes that much?”

“He actually owns the place,” Nicky says. “Bought it in cash the day after he signed his contract with the Leviathans. He just likes our company, I guess.”

Andrew is watching Neil. Neil ignores him and takes a closer look at the TVs. 

“Which one is best for watching sports?” he says.

*

Andrew goes through Neil's stuff. Neil figures it out because he hasn't, after all these years, kicked the habit of folding the tags in his clothing carefully to see if anything has been tampered with. It's a jolt, something he should have been expecting, but everything of value is locked in a safe that no one can get into without having some really good spy skills. And if someone has those skills, they probably already know exactly who Neil is and what he's hiding.

“I want to know why you're going through my shit,” Neil says, leaning against the frame in the doorway to Andrew's room. He tries to pass himself off as cool and dispassionate even though discovering the invasion of privacy sparked a panic in him that he hasn't felt in years.

Andrew looks up from his desk and tilts his head to the side. His dispassion seems a lot less fake than Neil's. “I want to know why someone as associated with the mob as you are is here.”

“What are you? Kevin's guard dog?”

“We are not talking about me.”

“Maybe we should,” Neil says. “What are you doing here? You never cared about exy when you played. You never seemed to care about Kevin other than constantly fucking shadowing him. You have a criminal record. But you're a social worker? Really?”

“Yes.”

“Why let me stay here, then?” Neil says. “If you're so convinced that I'm going to kill Kevin, why not stop me from signing the lease?”

Andrew considers him for a long moment. “Come with me,” he says, and leads Neil out to the fire escape.

Neil wonders if he's about to get murdered, but he puts the thought out of his head when he sees people in the building next to theirs grilling on their roof. Witnesses. 

Andrew lights a cigarette and doesn't offer one to Neil. Neil waits for whatever's coming.

“There is a strategy I employ when working with children,” Andrew says. “I tell you something about myself, and you tell me something about yourself. Honesty, you understand? It is a trade.”

“Why should I trust that whatever you say is true?” Neil says. “You just went through all my stuff. I should break the lease and move out.”

“Will you?”

“I haven't decided yet,” Neil says, and it's true—this apartment is too close to his workplace, too good a deal. He can get new locks. He doesn't know if he'd be able to find a better place. But if he doesn't trust his roommates, he'll have to. “You really think I'm here to do something to Kevin?”

“We'll find out. Are you playing?”

“Fine. Don't touch my things again, and I'll play your little honesty game.”

Andrew inclines his head. Neil, who is extremely familiar with deals being reneged on, says, “You go first.” 

“I never cared about exy,” Andrew says. “I played for PSU because they offered my brother and cousin spots on their roster and scholarships in exchange for my occasional cooperation. I stayed at PSU for Kevin, because of Riko Moriyama.”

“How can you not care about exy when you're capable of playing like—?” Neil says, and can't think of a way to finish the question. “I mean—some of your games—you could've gone pro if you'd played like that all the time.”

“Not everyone is you.”

“Who isn't?” Neil says. “No one with that much talent doesn't want to go pro.”

“Exy is boring,” Andrew says. “I wanted to do something interesting.”

“Do you think your job is interesting now?”

It's evident Andrew is selecting his words carefully: “I think my job is valuable now.”

Neil doesn't know how to respond to that, so he steals Andrew's cigarettes and lights one. He takes a slow drag. The smell still reminds him overwhelmingly of his mother, and he blinks back the pain at the memory of her and tries to take just the comfort. 

There is nothing about him that isn't already public information that he wants to share with Andrew. He waits for Andrew to ask for his truth in return, and Andrew doesn't disappoint.

“Why did you say you didn't want to live with Kevin?”

Kevin trusts Andrew. Andrew knows about the Moriyamas. 

“There's a target on my back,” Neil says. 

“Yes, your father's men. Everyone knows that.” 

It's true—it's the first thing that pops up if you google his name, how much of a risk it was for the Bobcats to sign him. Thinkpieces about whether he'll be worth it. Neil breathes in the smell of smoke.

“Not everyone knows why it's there.” Neil tugs at a loose thread on his sleeve. “My father sold me to the Moriyamas, or he tried to—I had an exy tryout for the Ravens when I was a kid, and my mother kidnapped me before the transaction could go through.”

Andrew stiffens, and Neil understands that his next words will determine whether or not he gets to keep living here. Maybe whether or not he gets to keep living. Those neighbors grilling aren't facing in their direction.

“I was supposed to be like Jean Moreau,” Neil continues. “But my mother saved me. I didn't want to bring back those memories.”

“You are telling me you did not want to live with Kevin because of PTSD.”

Partly. Partly because of the fact that he still technically works for the Moriyamas, and it seems wrong to live with Kevin while he's in their employ even if it is the only reason he can play without constantly fearing for his life. But he can't tell Andrew that.

“Yes,” Neil says. 

He expects—something. But he gets nothing from Andrew except silence, and he knows all about Andrew's past, knows Andrew might have PTSD himself. He's a social worker, has a bachelor's in psychology and a master's in social work, was abused by at least one foster brother. Maybe Andrew thinks he gets it.

“If you are lying to me, I will kill you,” Andrew says. 

“You'd go to jail.”

“I don't care,” Andrew says. “Kevin is mine to protect.”

“Why?”

Andrew blinks like he wasn't expecting the question. 

“We made a deal,” he says finally. “When he came to PSU. I am holding up my end.”

“Then why let me stay at all?”

“Because,” Andrew says, and leaves it at that, like it's anything approaching an answer.

Neil cups his hands around his cigarette. “Your turn,” he says.

Andrew smashes the rest of his own cigarette in the ash tray. “I will take it later.”

He stays for a moment like he's waiting for something, and then he climbs back inside the window.

*

The press surrounding Neil's move to the Bobcats mainly has to do with how trashed his reputation is, his bad attitude and that shit with the mob and his criminal father. Is he good enough to outweigh the risk of taking on such a volatile personality? Can he make up for that awful attitude with goals and leadership? Is it even possible for him to get along with his new teammates considering he's been rude to almost everyone he's recorded interacting with?

What the journalists fail to mention: Neil was captain of his college team by the time he left, won championships twice despite not being a Big Three team, made playoffs every year. He is friendly with every teammate he's ever had. He's no Kevin Day, but he's a capable striker and a reliable person to have on a team. He is an exy obsessive, which means he's a hard-worker who cares more about the game than he does about any drama off the court.

So it feels good, proving every single one of those idiot journalists wrong at the Bobcats' season opener in Brooklyn.

The Bobcats have a fluid attacking style that starts with the goalkeeper and relies on clinical passes that slowly build up to a powerful offensive threat. The idea is that you pass before an opposing player has the chance to dispossess you, even if that means passing backward. Instead of a direct back-to-front approach, they work the ball forward in careful little triangles, the anchor of which is typically the dealer on the court. 

They usually play with an offensive dealer. Gonzalez is one of the best in the position around, certainly the best in the eastern conference, but the sub offensive dealers are nothing to sneeze at, either, one super versatile even though she is a defensive dealer by trade, the other picking perfect passes out of nowhere every time he's on the court. 

The style is not foolproof. If they're playing against a team that's much bigger than them, they need to adapt it, move faster, maybe play more direct. If the opposing team is better technically, the Bobcats have to rely on speed instead of skill. If they play against a team that's content to blockade their goal for ninety minutes, they end up frustrated, giving up unnecessary fouls and getting appropriately penalized for them.

But today, everything goes to plan. The opposing team is not too big, or too good, or too defensively sound. And to Neil, there's nothing like winning. Really nothing. Winning in high school was good, winning in college was good, winning while pro is—just incredible. There's nothing like it, Neil's convinced, and he comes off the court with three goals in his pocket and his teammates curled around him, shouting and cheering. 

He didn't score more than their starting striker, who finished the game with four goals, but it's enough for his first game on the team, enough for thirty minutes of playtime total, enough to shock the other team's goalie and the press. 

Reporters in the locker room come at him before he can muscle his way to the showers, and Neil tries to stifle that trademark bad attitude.

“What do you have to say your doubters, Neil?” someone with a local NBC affiliate logo on their mic asks, shoving it in his face. 

“Weren't you one of them?” Neil says.

He can hear Gonzalez groaning behind him, so Neil laughs it off and counts it as a win when the reporter chuckles, too.

“All I really have to say is, if you watched my games instead of just reading the gossip, you wouldn't have been surprised,” Neil says, though even he was surprised by his performance—he's not bad, he knows that, and their competition wasn't terrific, but three goals for a first game for a new striker fresh out of college is. Well, a lot, for a sub.

“You're never doing press again,” Gonzalez whispers into his ear as Neil finally pushes past the mob to the showers, and there's a flood of something light in Neil's chest that makes him laugh. 

He doesn't get back to his apartment until well into the night, finding only Kevin still up, feet up, watching TV. 

“You played well tonight,” Kevin says. It might be the first thing Kevin has said to him since the day they met. “But you could be better.”

Neil can't figure out if that's a compliment or not, so he just gets a bottle of water and ignores it.

“Your aim is okay, but your power is not. You would score more goals if you understood the math behind them better.”

“I'll hire a tutor,” Neil says. 

“I am not joking,” Kevin says, turning to watch as Neil tries to edge out of the living room. “Your attitude needs adjusting, too. The press surrounding you has to be positive or you will be blacklisted for being difficult. You could be Court, but only if you take my advice.”

Court. Neil bites the inside of his cheek.

“I doubt it,” he says. 

“Who would know better than me?” Kevin says, impatient. “Let's go to the gym. I'll show you.”

“Kevin—”

“If you do not want my help, just say so.”

There are a thousand reasons to refuse—it's late, their teams are rivals, why would Kevin want more competition for his place on the national team, et cetera, et cetera.

But still. It's like Matt said. The Son of Fucking Exy. Kevin Day. Offering to help Neil improve his game.

“Yeah,” Neil says. “Okay.”

*

Their building has too many amenities, Neil thinks, and that Kevin has paid to have the basketball court converted into an exy court only proves that.

Also, he is exhausted and really should be in bed, but instead he's putting on spare gear and accepting the ball Kevin hands him.

“We should switch you to a heavier racquet soon,” Kevin says. “It lets you put in more power, but if you are too weak, you won't be able to use it.”

“I'm not too weak.”

“You are, but you won't be if you do as I tell you.” Kevin stretches a little, tossing his racquet from hand to hand. He has only rarely used his left hand since the accident that almost ruined his career, and Neil half-hopes this will be one of those times, but in the end Kevin settles on his inferior right hand. “I'm going to teach you Ravens drills.”

“Are they that different from regular drills?”

Kevin levels a disapproving look at Neil. “Obviously. How else would they always win?”

“They haven't won in a few years.”

“That is because the master is gone. They are rebuilding.”

“You defend them an awful lot considering they abandoned you when you got hurt.”

“It's not defense,” Kevin says. Defensively. “It's the truth.” He drags a bucket of balls out of a closet. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Neil says.

*

Andrew is still up when Neil and Kevin return to the apartment. He doesn't look at Kevin, but he meets Neil's eyes.

“Come outside, Neil,” he says.

“Andrew, he needs to sleep,” Kevin says. “Didn't you two figure it out anyway?”

“Go to bed, Kevin,” Neil says, following Andrew out onto the fire escape.

Andrew lights a cigarette. He doesn't offer the pack to Neil.

“See?” Neil says. “Your boy is still alive.”

“You were avoiding Kevin when you first moved in,” Andrew says. “What changed?”

“He didn't take an interest in me until he saw me play.”

“Doesn't explain your sudden comfort with it.”

Andrew is right, but Neil doesn't have an explanation. It's complicated, he supposes. 

“Kevin is—everything,” Neil says. “He's a link to my past. I spent all these years trying to distance myself from it, but now I live with one of the Moriyamas' other projects, and—” He shrugs. “I don't know. It's Kevin Day offering to help me with exy. It'd be like Neil Armstrong helping with your math homework. How do you turn that down?”

Andrew seems to accept this, because he says, “Neil Armstrong. Is that how you picked the name?”

“What?”

“Your real name is Nathaniel, but you go by Neil. Did you slice your father's name out of it on purpose, or are you a space junkie as well as an exy one?”

Neil steals the cigarette from between Andrew's fingers to give himself more time to answer. Andrew's eyes follow the cigarette to Neil's mouth, then return to glaring out in front of them. 

“Neither,” Neil says finally. “I just picked a name at random.”

“Nothing is random.”

“So if I flip a coin—”

“No human behavior is random,” Andrew clarifies.

  Neil actually agrees with him. He picked “Neil” out of a children's book he saw at a supermarket right after his mother died, and he liked it because it was just on the edge of too close to his real name. One of a thousand stupid choices he made after she died. Andrew doesn't need to know that.

“Maybe it was subconscious, then,” Neil says. “But as far as I'm concerned, it was random.”

Neil can't tell if Andrew accepts this or not, because Andrew glances down at his phone and then leaves Neil out on the fire escape alone.

After another moment, Neil follows him.

*

“You seem tired,” Gonzalez observes at breakfast the next morning.

Since last night was a game night, practice today is just a review of yesterday's game and some stretching. Neil is antsy, wants to play more especially now that he's proven himself capable of scoring actual goals, but he just shrugs.

“Yeah, a little,” he says. “When I got to my apartment, Kevin kept me up late talking about the game.”

“Jesus, I still can't believe you live with _Kevin Day_ ,” starting striker Hakima Abdou says, twisting her dark hair into a bun above her head. “What is that like? Is he, like, super intense?”

“Super critical,” Neil says. “I opened the door last night and the first thing he told me is that I need to be stronger.”

Abdou laughs, but Gonzalez nods very seriously. “He's right,” she says. “I'll tell Coach to put you on a more intense lifting circuit.”

He doesn't mention the extra practices with Kevin. Somehow, he doesn't think they'd approve.

*

It's summer, so Neil shouldn't be surprised at how frequently he finds Andrew leaning off their fire escape, or the window cracked open so he can get back in from the roof.

Sometimes, Neil lets him stay out there alone. More often, he follows him out. 

It isn't out of a desire for friendship or companionship or anything like that. It's just that Neil is intrigued. He wants to learn more about Kevin and Andrew's deal, about Kevin and Andrew, about why someone so good doesn't play. 

“You should come to one of our games,” Neil says on one of these afternoons. It's sunny and breezy now that summer is starting to give way to fall. It's nice. He likes this little corner of New York. “Maybe I can remind you why exy is so great.”

Andrew doesn't spare him a glance. “You will not be successful.”

“In general, or at this?”

“Both, probably.”

Neil forces himself not to smile. “Then you should come see me be unsuccessful.”

“Junkie.”

“Yeah,” Neil admits.

There's the sound of someone ascending the ladder, and then Nicky is dusting himself off and looking at Andrew and Neil, vaguely confused.

“So you guys are friends now?” Nicky says. “I mean, honestly, Andrew, I'm proud of you, but what did you do to Neil?”

“What?” Neil says, just as Andrew says, “We are not friends.”

“That's more like it,” Nicky says. “Anyway. Sorry to interrupt—I mean, not that sorry, you guys were probably having the world's most boring conversation since neither of you talk much and Neil isn't capable of talking about anything but exy—” He lets this hang for a moment as if expecting a laugh or a protest, then continues: “I want to throw you a housewarming party.”

“No way,” Neil says.

“Uh, yes way. We never have good excuses to party, you can't deny us this one. It'll be a blast, seriously, we have all this space, state of the art speaker system, an honest to god wet bar, and we never have parties! Kevin never wants to throw them, but if the two of us both want one, we can outweigh his vote since Andrew will probably abstain—”

“I don't even know anyone here yet,” Neil says.

“This will be a great way for you to meet people! Seriously, you invite the guy you get your coffee from every morning, I'll invite all my actual friends—oh, and Aaron's coming, and he's bringing Katelyn,” Nicky adds, looking to Andrew as if for permission and charging on when Andrew doesn't say anything. “Come on, it'll be fun. Liquor, music, taking advantage of this lovely space for once—plus your teammates are probably hot as shit, and we'll get Kevin's over here too!”

“The press is already having a field day with the rival roommates thing,” Neil says. The thought of it exhausts him.

“Yeah, so? Fuel to the fire, right? A picture of you with a couple of Leviathans? Then when you actually play each other you can fight them to make your fans happy? Doesn't that sound terrific?”

“What do you do for work again?” Neil says.

“Marketing. And I'm good at it, too.” Nicky grins. “We're doing it. I'm not taking no for an answer. Don't go hide at the gym the whole time, either.”

“I—” Neil says.

“Perfect! Can't wait.” Nicky bounds back off the roof, and Neil stares at Andrew.

“Is he always like that?” 

Andrew doesn't answer.

*

It's exhausting, all of this. Practice all day, extra workouts with Kevin in the afternoons. Forced socializing courtesy of Nicky or Neil's teammates. Most nights, he drops like a rock and sleeps until his alarm goes off.

Most nights.

Tonight, Neil wakes up screaming. He isn't sure if the bright fluorescent light he hasn't bothered to switch for something nicer clicked on before or after he woke up, but in it, he can see Andrew hanging back only a couple of feet away, wristband in one hand, series of raised lines on the insides of his forearms. 

Andrew almost looks surprised to see Neil, as much as he ever looks anything. Neil stares back at him.

“Sorry I woke you,” Neil says. “I get bad dreams sometimes.”

Andrew is silent for what feels like a full minute before saying, “Kevin gets them too.”

“Not you, though.”

Andrew looks unimpressed at this poor attempt to squeeze information. “Not everyone makes a spectacle of their issues.”

Neil's gaze drops back to Andrew's arms. He's close enough that he can make out the scars, but he can't believe his own eyes, reaches out and almost has his hand on the underside of Andrew's wrist before Andrew says, “Just so we're clear, I'll kill you.”

His other hand is still wielding that armband like it's a weapon, and Neil can see why now: there is something long and distinctly knife-shaped tucked inside it. 

“Andrew,” Neil says, but of the thousand questions that come to mind, he can't tell which will get him an answer. 

“You have way too many issues to be judging mine,” Andrew says. 

He's right. Neil's hand, a hair's breadth away from Andrew's arm, comes back to rest on Neil's bed.

“Sorry I wasn't being murdered,” Neil says. 

“I wish you had been,” Andrew says. “Keep quiet if someone does try to kill you.”

*

It's one of those frustrating games against a team that knows how to play against them, the Detroit Timberwolves. The Timberwolves start a defensive dealer and use their strikers more like backliners, tightening up around their goal so the Bobcats can't get close enough to score without potentially being crushed. Neil is infuriated just watching it, and when he comes on with fifteen minutes left to the half, it gets worse. The Timberwolves' strategy is clearly: tire them out, then attack on the counter in the second half.

It's still nil-nil thirty minutes in, which is unusual for the Bobcats, who usually score a decent amount and let in too many from counter attacks. Bello clacks sticks with Neil as they switch places, looking red in the face and superbly irritated.

He's right to be, Neil soon discovers, because terrible as these types of games are to watch, they're worse to play. It's just ball after ball bounced from him to the dealer on the court, Marie Philippe, and then back to the backliners and even further back, to Abernathy in goal. Neil runs, but every time he gets close he ends up being off-sides. 

The first opportunity to score comes in minute thirty-seven. Neil has the ball, most of the Timberwolves are on yellows so no one has wrestled it away yet, and there's an opening through which he might be able to reach the goal. Abdou catches Neil's line of thought immediately and darts forward just as Neil does, but even as Neil is drawing his arm back to pass to Abdou, someone rams into Neil from behind and the throw goes wildly off target. 

Neil falls forward, catching himself on his arms and twisting around to see who it is, some Timberwolf grinning from under his helmet like he isn't about to be sent off.

The ref blows his whistle. Second yellow for the Timberwolf; mid-play serve for Philippe, ten feet away from goal.

Ever generous, she passes to Neil. Neil takes two of his steps and shoots without waiting around to get checked again.

Goal. One-zero, Bobcats. 

A few minutes later: halftime. Neil looks up at the seats before he walks off. Nicky and Andrew are here; Nicky said something about wanting to watch a game for old time's sake and tagged along when Neil gave Andrew two tickets. Kevin would've been annoyed—he's apparently been trying to get Andrew to go to a Leviathans game since they moved to New York—but he's down in Tampa and has no idea. He'll probably be pissed when he gets back.

In any case, Neil can't see Nicky or Andrew from his vantage point, so he just follows the rest of his team into the locker rooms for the halftime talk.

Neil starts in the second half, and on Coach's orders, this time he throws himself at the Timberwolves defense in an attempt to rattle them. Now that they're a goal down, the Timberwolves can't afford to sit back, and opening up their lines means giving Neil a path to the goal.

He passes to Bello. Bello passes back to Philippe. Philippe passes to Neil. Neat, quick triangles. Neil passes to Bello again, and Bello hammers it at goal. Two-nothing. Racquet-clack on their way back to center court. Neil looks at the stands again, as if to say, _See? Fun_ , but he can't see Andrew and he can't be sure Andrew sees him.

*

As predicted, Kevin is in a foul mood when he gets back from Tampa even though the Leviathans won by an absurd margin.

Everyone knows why, but no one talks about it until Kevin and Neil go to the gym in the afternoon. They run through Kevin's drills in silence, and Neil has scored from a dozen impossible angles before Kevin finally says, “How did you convince him to go?”

“It didn't take much convincing,” Neil says. 

“But what did you say?”

“I asked.”

“And he just said yes?”

“He called me a junkie, and then a week later he asked me why I hadn't given him tickets yet.”

Kevin's jaw works. “You should've seen him in goal. He would've been the best ever.”

“I did. Most of the time it didn't look like he gave a shit.” But then sometimes, it was like watching someone who was built for what he was doing. 

“At first he was medicated,” Kevin says. “Coach had to bribe him into playing well, and when he came off his meds, he was supposed to care more.”

“But he didn't.”

“He only cared about annoying me.”

“But you're still friends.”

“Friends,” Kevin repeats, a little dazed, like the concept is foreign. “Not exactly.”

“So you're,” Neil says, trying to figure out how to word it. “Together?”

Kevin makes a face. “With Andrew? No, Jesus. We had a deal. He made it impossible for me to hold up my end, but he held up his, so.” Kevin shrugs. “I pay his rent. He picked the apartment. That's why I have such a long commute. He is spiteful, and we are stuck together.”

Years ago, Neil would've called that something else, but now he knows better. “That's friendship, Kevin.”

Kevin narrows his eyes at Neil, but he doesn't dispute this, just picks up their bucket of balls and walks out.

*

Between working out in afternoons with Kevin, practice with his team, and actual exy games, Neil hasn't actually had the opportunity to see much of the city.

At least, this is the excuse he gives Matt when Matt's in town for his team's game against the Leviathans and drags Neil to Manhattan for a quick meal. 

“Oh, come on, like I don't know you,” Matt says. “You couldn't be convinced to sightsee anything that isn't directly related to exy.”

“What could I sightsee that's related to exy? The Hall of Fame is in West Virginia.”

“Exactly,” Matt says. “Which is why the only places you know how to get to on the subway are the court you practice at and the court you play games at.”

“They're within walking distance, actually.”

“Jesus. I bet you don't even have a MetroCard.”

“Of course I have a MetroCard,” Neil says. He does, but it's brand new—purchased earlier that day on his way to meet Matt.

“Okay, so the tourist stuff, Statue of Liberty, Times Square—you're not interested.”

Neil thinks about the crowds. “No.”

“But, like, there's other stuff,” Matt says. “Restaurants, bars—well, you don't drink, I guess, but there's food! But you don't even eat unless it's like, protein shakes and flavorless whatever.” He shakes his head. “I know you don't date, but you at least need to find a platonic friend with actual interests. Maybe, like, art or something. Seriously, you need to diversify. You can't _only_ be into your job.”

“Why not?” Neil says. Kevin said he could be Court. The thought of it is too much to even want, but if he works hard enough, maybe, _maybe_ —

“Because, dude, eventually you're gonna have to retire, and then what are you going to have?”

“I don't know,” Neil says. He hasn't really ever thought about it. Living this long was unlikely—living past retirement seems impossible. “I'll coach or something.”

“But don't you want friends?”

“I have friends,” Neil says. 

“Other than me, Dan, and your current teammates, I mean.”

“Why would I need anyone else?”

“What if you change teams? Or what if you get injured? What are you going to do then?”

He doesn't really know. Watch exy, probably.

“I'm telling you,” Matt continues through a mouthful of caesar salad. “It's not healthy. You gotta branch out. At least go to the Met or something.”

“I don't like baseball,” Neil says automatically.

“No, no, the _Met_ , not the Mets—you know what, whatever, you're hopeless.” Matt grins at him. “So. Tell me the secret to beating Kevin Day.”

“If you make his teammates look incompetent, he'll get pissed at them and they'll stop passing to him,” Neil says. “Otherwise, you're fucked.”

“Genius. I'll tell everyone. I'll tell ESPN you told me, too, because maybe if there's some drama in your apartment you'll finally have to go out and meet people.”

Neil flicks an olive at him, but it's funny anyway, and he has to admit that he's glad Matt's here in this big unfamiliar city even if it is just for a few hours. He hopes Matt wins tonight.

*

“Neil! Neil, I'm Pete Cliffberg with ESPN—were you here cheering on your new roommate, Kevin Day? Or your old one, Matt Boyd?”

“Uh—” Neil says, a little startled by the mics in his face. He didn't come here expecting to do press. “I'm here cheering on exy.”

“Do you have anything to say about the Leviathans' first loss of the season?”

“Only that we're coming for them,” Neil says, baring his teeth.

“Words of support for your roomie?”

“He doesn't need my support,” Neil says. “You saw him tonight. Even when they were losing. He's incredible.” 

He can't keep the admiration out of his voice. Next to him, Nicky snorts and luckily doesn't say anything. 

“But they did lose. What do you think this means for your season?”

“Like I said,” Neil says. “A loss for our rivals can only be good for us.”

*

It's warm in their apartment even though it's brisk outside, and Nicky has an actual bartender serving drinks and soft light flowing through the common areas and a carefully curated playlist blasting from the speakers.

“You're right, Jesus, it is hot,” Nicky says, fanning himself with his hand. “Guess that's why they call it a housewarming, huh? Right?” 

He waits for Neil to respond, and when Neil doesn't, rolls his eyes. 

“Okay, whatever, dude, just go be nice to your friends. You sure you don't want a drink?”

“I'm good,” Neil says, nursing his glass of ice water. “Thanks. It looks really cool in here.”

Nicky beams at him. “I'm glad you think so, considering it's _your_ party. Have fun, okay? Or like, at least pretend you are.”

Neil does as he's told. Most of his teammates are here already, spread through the space that he has come to think of as his. It's strange, them being here in real clothing and not just Bobcat-issued workout gear. He hasn't seen any of them in the context of anything other than exy yet, and he should be less surprised than he is that they look—normal. It's easy to think of exy as life or death, especially when for him it is, but for these people it's just a sport. A job. One they're passionate about, maybe, but still just a game. 

“You are thinking way too much,” Gonzalez says, dropping a heavy arm across Neil's shoulders. “Are you always like this?”

“Haven't you figured that out yet?”

Gonzalez laughs. “I think I'm starting to. Which of these guys are your roommates?”

“Uh—” Neil says, looking around. There's Andrew talking to the bartender, who is laughing at something Andrew said, which is odd because Neil can't imagine Andrew being funny on purpose. Nicky is flirting with someone Neil vaguely recognizes as a Leviathan, who is doing a not great job at pretending not to flirt back. Kevin is having an intense-looking conversation with a few Bobcats, who look like they're eating up everything he says.

“Looks like an interesting place,” Gonzalez says when Neil points them out. “So you like it here?”

“What?” 

“Hey, I'm the captain, right?” She grins at him. She looks different without all her gear. More intimidating somehow, like it's the helmet and padding that tone her down instead of the other way around. “Gotta make sure you're settling in well.”

“I am,” Neil says. “I think I am. They're—” Bizarre, overprotective, loud. “They're weirdos, but the rent is, like, super cheap, and it was kind of hard to find a place.”

Gonzalez laughs. “You know you don't have to worry about that, right? If you need help finding housing, the team has resources for that.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, everyone knows it's impossible to find space in New York, and we're all busy people,” Gonzalez says. “Plus you're new here, and you're young and rich. Well—rich-ish. If you donated less of your money maybe you could get your own place.”

“So I could just give them a budget and they'd find an apartment for me?” Neil says, watching Nicky open the door for someone who looks a lot like Andrew.

“Yeah, exactly,” Gonzalez says. “Then you don't need to live with three other grown men.” A pause. “Unless you like them and enjoy their company, of course.”

“They're fine,” Neil says. 

Gonzalez punches his shoulder lightly. “High praise from Bobcats number ten Neil Josten. Let me know if you change your mind and want me to hook you up with them.”

“Will do,” Neil says as Gonzalez wanders off to talk to someone else.

He's thinking he might go hide in his room, or maybe see what it is Andrew is telling the bartender to make him laugh so much, when sub goalie Morgan Waters flags him down. 

“Neil, come here, I was just telling Mats how weird it is that he's been a Bobcat for two years and hasn't seen Central Park.”

“Neither have I,” Neil says, though he knows by now that no one is as devoted to exy as he is except for maybe Kevin and that in fact they all think it's weird that he's so obsessed with what amounts to ninety minutes of violence once or twice week, that he doesn't have friends outside of the sport, that he doesn't go out, so he has to amend it. “Manhattan is a hike, right?”

“That is what I said,” Mats says, sounding very German. “Why should I go to Central Park when there is a park every other block here? Central Park is just a tourist trap. I live here. I should see the places the tourists do not.”

“Okay, sure, but do you go to Prospect Park?” Morgan says. “Like, maybe you're too good for the Met, but have you been to the Brooklyn Museum? Coney Island is for tourists, but Rockaway?”

“I've been to lots of places,” Mats says. 

“Name one.”

“There is a lovely European-style cafe about a ten minute walk from my apartment.”

“Are you talking about the Starbucks outside our gym?” Morgan says. “Dude—come on, that's ridiculous, right, Neil? Neil's been here like four months and I bet he's been plenty of places.”

Just past her shoulder, Andrew and his lookalike have started a conversation. His lookalike's friendly looking female companion—must be Katelyn—is hanging back a little, looking worried.

“Honestly, I've only been in Manhattan once since I moved into this apartment,” Neil tells her.

“But you've seen _some_ stuff, right?”

Andrew isn't talking, just staring his brother down. Then he says something sharp that makes Katelyn tug Aaron's hand and makes Aaron snap something back.

“No,” Neil says honestly.

Aaron and Katelyn are heading for the door, and Andrew doesn't look back at them, just disappears out the window to the roof.

“But—”

“Excuse me,” Neil tells Morgan and Mats. 

He goes to his room—it's cold out—and shrugs on a sweater. Then he thinks about it and grabs another before ducking out of their apartment and up onto the roof. The normal way, not up the ladder outside their fire escape.

Sure enough, there's Andrew, sitting on the ledge with his legs hanging down, smoking.

Nicky said that the roof was a go-to party locale, but it isn't tonight, maybe because it's cold outside for the first time in months. Neil rubs his arms and presses against the ledge. Nicky's right—the view from downstairs is only okay, but from up here it's great, roofs in front of them and then in the distance that famous Manhattan skyline. 

Matt and Morgan are right. Neil has barely seen any of the city since he's been here. He tries to make himself care about missing out and hands Andrew the sweatshirt.

Andrew shrugs it on and doesn't say anything, just stays put, perched on the ledge with legs dangling off. Neil wonders if Andrew is suicidal or just an adrenaline junkie. Maybe both.

“Say it,” Andrew says. 

Neil reaches for the pack of cigarettes next to the hand Andrew has pressed against the ledge. He waits for Andrew to hand him a lighter, lights the cigarette, and cups it in his hands for a long moment before asking.

“What are you doing up here?” Neil says. “Don't tell me you just wanted to be alone, because it's cold and you have a warm bedroom downstairs. And don't say you just needed fresh air, because you don't need to climb onto a ledge for fresh air.”

Andrew doesn't say anything for a bit. Neil can only see the side of his face from this angle, but it looks like Andrew is looking down, which draws a spike of hatred in the pit of Neil's stomach that he wasn't expecting. 

“Feeling,” Andrew says finally.

“What does that mean?”

Andrew brings his fingers up to his own throat, and it takes Neil a second to understand that he's feeling for his pulse. Andrew taps along to it, too quickly, and Neil understands.

“You're scared of heights.”

Andrew inclines his head. 

“That's how you force yourself to feel. Because you don't feel anything else.”

“Can't,” Andrew says.

“Don't,” Neil says. 

“Do not talk about things you know nothing about.”

“I'm not.”

Andrew turns to look at him at last. “I hate you.” 

“I have another question for you.”

“It isn't your turn.”

“Then take yours.”

“What are you scared of?” Andrew says. 

It's a fair question. Neil hesitates: the list is short but telling, and much more personal than a fear of heights.

“Dying,” he says. “Like everyone else, I guess.”

“Not everyone.”

“You can't be scared of heights if you're not scared of dying.”

“Not dying. Falling. And that isn't a good enough answer.”

“It's the truth,” Neil says. “I was scared of my father when he was alive because I thought he might kill me, and my mother made it seem like there wasn't anything worse than dying.”

“You do not still believe that.”

“What's worse? I can't imagine it,” Neil says, and remembers too late everything in Andrew's childhood, Andrew caught off-guard the other night, standing in Neil's room without his armbands on, forearms covered in those tell-tale crisscrossed lines. “I know it's not true for everyone,” he amends. “But it's true for me.”

“Because of your mother.”

“If I so much as made a friend, she'd drag me away by the ear and remind me why I shouldn't.”

“She hit you?”

“It was for the best,” Neil says. Andrew goes very still. “If she didn't, I might not have learned how important it was.”

“People who hit children do not do it in the child's interest.”

“I wasn't a child.”

“You are still a child. Only children think there is nothing worse than death.”

“What's worse than death?” Neil asks.

Andrew doesn't say anything, but he's running a finger along the inside of his arm like he's deep in thought. It's then that Neil sees it, the mess of his knuckles, skin split and still bleeding. 

“I want to ask a different question,” Neil says, and when Andrew doesn't reply says, “Why did you need to fill the room so desperately?”

“We did not,” Andrew says. 

“You're charging at least a thousand dollars less than you could be charging for a huge room in a penthouse in Park Slope,” Neil says. “You needed to fill it.”

“Kevin does not need the money.”

“Then why get a new roommate at all?”

“Nicky wanted to.”

“Don't lie.”

Andrew's head swings back around. “I am not the liar here.”

Neil waits, and finally Andrew explains: “My brother left to live with Katelyn, and Nicky thought it would be best for my mental health to replace him.”

“But you two hate each other,” Neil says. “Why would it be good for your mental health?”

“Nicky's mind works in mysterious ways.”

“I don't think so. I think he was right.”

Andrew looks down at his bloodied knuckles. “Do you?”

“Why are you so pissed about Katelyn? Did you used to date her or something?” Neil can't imagine Andrew dating anyone, least of all bubbly, cheerful Katelyn, but at least it would make some of their shit make sense.

“I am not pissed,” Andrew says. 

“Really?” Neil says. “Then why are you trying to break your hand?”

Andrew pulls the hand in question out of Neil's view and resumes looking broodingly beneath them instead of out at the cityscape before them.

“I'm remembering why I don't like you.”

“Surprised you forgot,” Neil says.

“I didn't forget. I just got distracted.”

“By Aaron and Katelyn,” Neil says, a last-ditch attempt to get an answer that he already knows won't work. Andrew has receded back into that quiet, still space of his, and he smokes in silence while Neil plays with his own cigarette until it burns up and watches him.

Andrew looks odd in the bright yellow of Neil's sweatshirt, like his skin doesn't go with it or something. Neil wonders if he's ever worn anything other than black in his life, except that of course he has, because Palmetto State's school color is orange. 

“I'm going downstairs,” Neil says. “You should come inside. It's cold out.”

Andrew doesn't respond, but he flicks his lit cigarette at Neil when Neil moves toward the fire escape stairs. Neil takes this little temper tantrum to mean that Andrew is done smoking and will be down shortly.

The party is still going, Kevin absolutely plastered and playing beer pong with some of Neil's teammates, arguing about the rules. Aaron and Katelyn are, unsurprisingly, nowhere to be found. Everything else seems normal, people Neil is getting to know in the apartment he's starting to think of as home. He doesn't drink, but no one has tried to make him, not like in college. He doesn't date, but no one here cares—they're all too concerned, like he is, with winning. The apartment is nice, and his roommates are mostly pleasant. Or, well, Nicky is pleasant and Kevin is going to make Neil Court and Andrew is confusing and interesting and sets Neil's teeth on edge a little bit. 

He likes it here. Even if he hasn't seen New York. Even if he's only been in his little corner of Brooklyn, his grocery store and the bodega where he gets breakfast on weekends and the park where he runs, his court, his teammates' favorite places to eat on weeknights, his teammates' apartments. He doesn't need all of New York. He just needs these little pockets of it. 

Someone drags him into a conversation, a Leviathan who wants to talk exy (“Supersub Neil Josten! Get over here”), and Neil happily participates. He catches sight of the window sliding open a few minutes later, makes momentary eye contact with Andrew, and returns to the conversation at hand. 

They'll trade more truths tomorrow. For now, exy.

*

No one wakes up early the next day except for Neil, who goes for a long, meandering run through Prospect Park. He picks up breakfast, too, but he's showered and made a fresh pot of coffee before anyone else gets up.

As luck would have it, it's Nicky, stumbling out of the bathroom with a hickey and bed hair. He guzzles a cup of coffee while staring morosely into the refrigerator before noticing the bag of pastry and bagels on the counter. 

“You are honestly an angel sent from above to restore my faith in humanity,” Nicky says, refilling his coffee and settling on the couch next to Neil with one of the bagels. “You moving into this place is the best thing that's happened to us since Andrew finagled us all free college.”

“I actually wanted to ask you about that.”

“It was some kind of scam,” Nicky says. “Andrew's so good that our coach put me and Aaron on the team too just to have him.”

“You'd think he would've played better knowing your scholarships were on the line.”

“Nah, after that we kinda proved ourselves.”

“That wasn't my question anyway,” Neil says. “I wanted to ask about the room I'm in right now. It used to be Aaron's, right?”

Nicky squeezes his eyes together like he'd rather go back to sleep than have to think about this. “Yeah. Why? Did he say something?”

“No, I just wanted to know why you needed to fill it so quickly.”

Nicky sighs. “The twins don't exactly get along.”

“I know they didn't meet until they were teenagers, but they lived together for years after that, didn't they?”

“There's a lot of stuff you don't know about,” Nicky says. “Andrew's really intense.” He bites his lip. “Okay, I'm gonna tell you something, and I'm going to assume you won't get freaked out because you clearly have to be a little fucked up to come away from everything that happened to you and still be just as obsessed with a fucking sport, but—Neil, you can't tell anyone. Seriously, or Kevin won't give you lessons anymore.” 

He waits, and when Neil doesn't say anything, continues. 

“Aaron's mom used to hit him, and there was some shit that happened after he and Andrew met, but long story short, Andrew came to live with them eventually, got Aaron to take a test for him, and ended up in a car with Aaron's mom. She thought he was Aaron. She—we don't really know, maybe she went to hit him or something, and there was an accident. Or, I mean, there was a crash. Right into this giant tree on the side of the road, apparently at great speed. One of them survived.”

“Andrew killed Aaron's mother?” Neil says. 

“She must've tried to hit him,” Nicky says. “He probably just wanted to defend himself. I'm not—I don't think it's justified or anything, but when you try to hit someone who was in foster care and abused by his foster parents—”

“But what if he'd died? How was he supposed to control that?”

“I don't know,” Nicky says. “It's Andrew. He can do all kinds of stuff.”

“You think Andrew survived a car crash he caused just because of—what, magic?”

“I don't know,” Nicky says again. “But it was definitely him. You don't know how much he _hated_ Tilda. And I guess—I mean, Aaron obviously suspected, but he was stuck with Andrew for high school because he was underage and I was their guardian and I wasn't going to—like, I might've just met Andrew, but that's my cousin, you know? It's family, even if Andrew doesn't think of it like that—and I think maybe Aaron was secretly grateful? Because he was, like, all fucked up, not like he is now. Tilda had him on all these drugs, he could barely even talk most of the time, it's another reason it was weird Andrew had him take the test. He probably wouldn't have gotten off them without Andrew making him. After that, I mean, he wasn't going to get to go to college if it wasn't for free, and Andrew got him free college, too.”

“So Aaron hates Andrew for killing his mother,” Neil says. “But she was awful.”

“I don't know. Kids who get abused—it's like cognitive dissonance, right? This person who's supposed to love you treats you like shit, and you start to think that's what being loved is supposed to be like. It's biology, right, like—everyone loves their mothers, even if their mothers are the worst.” Nicky has this odd, lost expression on his face, and Neil gets the idea that Aaron isn't the only person whose mother was the worst. “I guess Aaron feels like he never got a chance prove he wasn't the worthless piece of shit his mother told him he was.” 

Something clicks for Neil. Aaron's protective arm around Katelyn, the repressed fury in the line of Andrew's body, Andrew's scarred wrists and bloodied knuckles, how still Andrew went when he heard that Neil's mother hit him. Andrew standing in Neil's room in the middle of the night. It's not the same thing, Neil's relationship with his mother and Aaron's relationship with his, but it must have felt like it to Andrew. 

“How do you know Andrew didn't kill his mother for abusing Aaron?” Neil says.

“What?” Nicky says, shaken out of his reverie. “Andrew hates Aaron.”

“Even then? Why?”

“I don't know. I always thought it was because Aaron got to be the twin who didn't get given away.”

“That doesn't make sense,” Neil says. “Andrew doesn't just hate people for no reason.”

Nicky shakes his head. “You didn't know him back then. He was different. They had to put him on these, like, awful meds before we started at PSU—he was really violent before that, got into fights all the time.”

Neil's seen that, too, a fight at a nightclub, apparently because some men were threatening his cousin. He makes the connection for the first time.

“He defended you,” Neil says. “Why can't he have been defending Aaron?”

Nicky looks startled, like he's never thought of this before, even though it seems obvious to Neil. 

“And he protected Kevin all through college,” Neil says. “He still does. But if you didn't know them, you might think they hate each other.”

“Neil, they're my cousins,” Nicky says. “I think I'd know.”

But it all makes sense, doesn't it? Because if Aaron thought Andrew killed Tilda out of spite instead of his brand of violent protectiveness, then maybe Andrew was so upset at the implication that any possible relationship with Aaron soured. It doesn't explain Katelyn, though.

“What about Katelyn?” Neil says. “Why does Andrew hate her so much?”

“To be honest, I don't really know,” Nicky says. “Maybe he hates Aaron's happiness or something. I know in high school, they made this deal—they would have each other's backs, and they wouldn't ever let anyone else in. Obviously you can't do that when you're on a team, like we were in college, but they tried to do it anyway.”

“And Aaron reneged on the deal with Katelyn?”

“It's possible, but I mean—you saw them last night. Andrew really hates her. That's not just going to be because of some deal.”

“What if you took the deal really, really seriously?” 

“No one takes deals that seriously,” Nicky says. “Come on, Neil, Andrew is intense and crazy, but he's not that intense and crazy.”

Neil thinks of Andrew out on the ledge with his fingers tapping along to his pulse, or standing in Neil's room in his pajamas looking fully ready to murder whatever made Neil scream.

No. Whatever made Aaron scream. He thought it was Aaron screaming and immediately went to protect him. 

“Maybe,” Neil says rather than continue the argument. 

He flicks mindlessly through their row of ESPN channels, but it's a weekend morning, so it's just soccer and golf and other sports he doesn't care about. He doesn't resist when Nicky steals the remote and changes it to something else, and when Nicky blathers on about something, gives him standard responses. 

It's an odd morning, but eventually Kevin and Andrew join them, neither of them thanking Neil for breakfast with Nicky's enthusiasm and both squabbling over what they watch on TV. It feels weird, like his freshman year of college when it was him and Dan and Matt and the rest of their team, his first ever friends. 

“Neil, you're being, like, freaky-quiet,” Nicky says. “You good?”

He has to be referring to their conversation earlier. Neil nods.

“Just tired,” he says. 

“Same, god, what a long night. It was fun, though, right?”

“Yeah,” Kevin says. “Good party, Nicky.” He looks at his phone. “Should we order food?”

“Thank god you said that, because if you didn't, I would definitely have ordered it anyway and just ignored your pissy face,” Nicky says. “Neil, you got breakfast—what do you want?”

“Oh,” Neil says. “Whatever, I don't care, you pick something.”

“No preferences,” Andrew says. “A blank slate.”

“Just 'cause he's not as difficult as you—” Nicky says, pulling up an app on his phone. “What about Chinese? Kevin?”

They agree on Chinese, and Neil even feigns a preference for a particular meal to annoy Andrew. It's a nice afternoon, sunny, warm, and Neil thinks he likes all of them, even Andrew, even if Andrew hates him.

*

The season picks up after that. The games come hard and fast, and so does travel, enough of it to set Neil's teeth on edge. He still hates airports, and every time he lands at LaGuardia or JFK he feels more nervous about it even though the time in his life where it was important to never appear at the same airport more than once is long over.

The exy season works a lot like the hockey season, except given that it's a newer sport, it's on a much smaller scale. NHL teams play every team in their division four or five times and end up playing eighty games a season. MLE might end up there in ten or twenty years, but for now, they play forty-eight over the course of eight months with a two week long break in February.

That means around a game and a half per week, and some of them are close—anything north of Virginia and east of Pittsburgh is a short flight away—but some of them are far, seven hours each way to San Jose or L.A. or Vegas. They get to play half the western conference at home, but that's still eight games of long distance travel.

A lot of the time, Neil sleeps on airplanes or in shared hotel rooms. When he and Kevin are both in New York, they still go to the gym every afternoon, but more often, one or both of them is out of town.

It means, mostly, that Neil gets to eat, sleep, and breathe exy. Sure, when he's in Philadelphia he sees Matt, and when he's in Washington he sees Dan, and there are other old teammates scattered across the country who want to get lunch with him and snap photos for their social media. But for the most part it's just exy or photoshoots where he leans on an exy racquet dressed head to toe in Adidas or interviews where he talks about exy and says his lack of a love life is due to complete and utter dedication to the sport because his team's media trainer told Neil to say it but also pretty much because it's true.

Which is all to say: Neil doesn't notice when October ends. He barely takes in Halloween or Daylight Savings. He sees the numbers go up in his bank account, then sees them drain again when Ichirou steps in to take his cut. He wears heavier clothing for his morning walk to work, puts on a coat when he follows Andrew out to the fire escape or the roof to bother him, and is surprised when one weekend he wakes up and it's snowing.

Nicky is already in the kitchen when Neil gets there, singing along loudly to Christmas songs and flipping pancakes in a Santa hat.

“It's not Christmas, is it?” Neil says.

“It is!” Nicky says. “Get in the Christmas spirit! Buy some kids some toys! Come on, I know you make a lot, my work is doing a Toys for Tots thing, here, all you have to do is write a check—”

“I didn't even notice Thanksgiving.”

Nicky laughs, and then he looks around at Neil. “Oh, you're serious. No, I mean—I mean, it's like, the week before Thanksgiving or something. I'm just getting in the spirit! Never too early, right?”

Neil recalibrates. “Okay, so it's November.”

“Are you serious? Really? Neil, honey, you are so out of touch. You need to diversify your life.”

Victor Rose, one of Neil's fellow sub strikers, said something in the same vein the other night when Neil revealed he had no idea how to get to Queens. They'd be on to something if Neil could make himself care about anything other than exy.

“My life is diverse,” Neil says, just for the sake of arguing. “You and Andrew don't play exy anymore. See? Diversity.”

“You spend like two minutes with me a day,” Nicky says. “I'm feeling _extremely_ neglected, by the way. You hang out with Andrew and Kevin all the time, but your old friend Nicky? Who you've known for four long months? This is the first conversation we've had since before we turned the clocks back, Josten.”

“We turned the clocks back?” Neil says, because it's the kind of thing that would've made Matt laugh, and Nicky and Matt are similar in that they both seem to just want Neil to make normal human jokes. 

Nicky laughs and ruffles Neil's hair. “Sometimes I can't tell if you're joking or not, kid. Get the maple syrup, let's eat before the monsters wake up.”

“Monsters?” 

“Old nickname.”

“Because one of them saved his brother from an abuser and the other continued to play exy after a career-threatening injury?” Neil guesses. 

“You're, like, the only person who's sympathetic about Andrew except for maybe me and our coach in Palmetto,” Nicky says. “You're an Andrew apologist.”

“I'm not an apologist. I just get what it's like to have the people who are supposed to take care of you be the scariest thing in your life.” 

Nicky stills halfway through flipping a pancake. 

“So do I,” he says. “But I never killed anyone.”

Neil considers telling Nicky that _he's_ killed people, but somehow he doesn't think his roommate would cover for a near-stranger the way he covers for his cousin. 

It kills the mood. Nicky serves Neil pancakes and coffee, and they eat in mostly awkward silence until Nicky finally says, “Why do everyone's parents suck so much? Except Kevin's, obviously, but one of them is dead and the other one didn't even know he was a parent until a couple years ago, so he doesn't count. The world just kind of sucks.”

“It's not the world that sucks. It's the people in it.”

Nicky raises an eyebrow. “Deep, Neil. Did you take Philosophy 101 or what?”

“No. What does that have to do with anything?”

“I'm making fun of you.”

“Oh,” Neil says. “For what?”

Nicky looks torn between horror and mirth at this, which twists his face so hilariously that even Neil finds himself cracking a small smile.

*

Neil is out for a run in the snow when a shiny black car pulls up to him and just idles while he waits for a light to change. Every single bone in his body wants to ignore it; he can feel his tendons fighting him with every step he takes in its direction.

A window rolls down. Someone is behind him, someone Neil didn't notice because he's lost his hyper vigilant streak in the years of relative peace since the last time this happened, and they have cold metal pressed against the back of his neck.

“Get in,” the person in the car says. 

Neil gets in.

Ichirou isn't there. It's a lower level goon, but not much lower, judging by the watch gleaming from his wrist and the clearly designer suit. 

“You live with Kevin Day,” the goon says. 

“I could've confirmed that in a phone call,” Neil says, because it isn't Ichirou and without Ichirou's say so, the few million dollars a year Neil generates in income aren't going to just disappear. 

“What are you planning?”

“Nothing. It was a cheap room close to work.”

“It is not close to work for Kevin.”

“Then why isn't he the one in your car?” Neil says. 

“The lord wants to know why you and Kevin spend so much time alone in the private gym.”

Neil forces himself not to react to the news of this surveillance. “You have eyes on us and you expect me to believe they shut when we step into the gym?”

“I expect you to believe what we tell you to believe.”

“Then your boss should've sent someone more intimidating than you.”

“I will not kill you,” the goon says. “That is true. But there are people in your life we can hurt if you do not cooperate. Your roommates. Your teammates. Your friends across the country.” He waits to gauge Neil's reaction. “If you do not comply, they will be the ones to pay for it.”

“Tell Lord Moriyama that if you touch any one of my friends, I'll go the FBI and sing like a bird,” Neil says. “That's not a bluff. Maybe you'll get to me fast enough to prevent much damage, but also, maybe you won't. I haven't done anything wrong. I lived in a cheaper apartment because most of my salary goes into Moriyama accounts. Kevin Day living there? Was a fucking coincidence. We play exy in the gym, but it's not really your business what I do unless it directly affects your profits, which this does not.”

“Everything you do affects our profits,” the man says. “Threaten us again and you will die. We can recover from the loss of your salary. You cannot recover from death. Get out.”

Neil gets out, turns on his heel, and sprints the distance back to his apartment, potential injury in the slippery snow be damned. All he can think is that if he doesn't get there now, he's gone for good.

This isn't that bad. It's not bad at all. It wouldn't be bad at all if he could keep his fucking mouth shut for five minutes. They want to know what he's doing living with Kevin. It's a reasonable question. It is. He shouldn't have been irritable. He should've kept his head down.

Except for all that he's Neil Josten, he's Nathaniel Wesninski, too, the kid who mouthed off to his father even though he was terrified and got himself so many scars that he can barely look in the mirror, the kid who got half his face melted off in college and still wouldn't shut up. 

His heart rate is through the roof. Well above his normal post-run high. He needs to shower, get some water, and chill the fuck out, except showering goes poorly because his hands don't stop shaking, and water won't go cleanly down his throat.

He gives up on it and searches for Andrew. He wants a cigarette so he can sit outside and be comforted by the thought of his mother. Also: he should leave. He should take Gonzalez up on her offer and contact housing and get out of this apartment. He was right in the first place. The target is too big with both of them here.

Andrew doesn't say anything when he opens the door to his room and finds Neil there, just waits.

“Can I have a cigarette?” Neil says.

Andrew gets his pack and a lighter from his desk, and then he walks out of the room. Neil didn't mean for Andrew to come along, but it's better than nothing, especially since he didn't think to stop and get his own before coming back.

On the fire escape, Neil cups the cigarette between his hands and thinks about burning his mother's body, how terrified he was then, how very sure of what he had to do and also how very sure that he wouldn't survive. But here he is, alive, with a degree and years to live and a job he would have—no exaggeration—died for. 

Andrew doesn't say anything until he's smoked two cigarettes and lit a third, and then he says, “I have to tell Nicky I won the bet.”

“What bet?”

“We were having lunch, and he suggested you would have a nervous breakdown around January. I thought it would be this weekend.”

“Yeah, well,” Neil says. “You're wrong. This isn't a nervous breakdown.” 

But he doesn't know how to categorize what it is—an adrenaline rush with nowhere to go, maybe; or a reminder that he should be spending every waking moment terrified of his own death instead of enjoying his life, that he's only alive because he's allowed to be. 

“It's my turn,” Neil says, more to distract himself than anything else. He puts the remains of his cigarette in his mouth and takes a drag. “Why did you kill Aaron's mother?”

Andrew doesn't look surprised that Neil knows or surprised that Neil asked. Actually, all he looks is his usual self, blandly unimpressed. “She did not deserve to continue to live.”

“You know that's not what I meant.”

“It answers the question.”

“This isn't about semantics, Andrew.”

Andrew levels a bored stare at Neil, but he doesn't sound bored when he replies. “I killed her because she put her hands on him after I warned her not to. I said I would protect him, and I did.”

There's a degree of something like frustration to his words, and Neil knows why.

“Aaron thinks you killed her out of spite.”

“Do not talk about things you know nothing about.”

“I'm not,” Neil says. “You killed her to protect him, and he thinks you killed her because you were pissed she gave you up. That's why you hate Katelyn, isn't it? You agreed not to get close to anyone else, and Aaron didn't hold up his end.”

“We could not trust anyone else,” Andrew says. 

“I get that.” 

“You would. Runaway.”

“You have way too many issues to be judging mine.” 

“Stop talking,” Andrew says, and he considers Neil for a moment like he wants to say something else, but he doesn't, just lights another cigarette and takes a slim knife out of one of his armbands.

Neil waits. He knows what's coming. 

“The scars you're hiding. Are they from your mother, or a life on the run?” Okay, maybe he doesn't know what's coming.

“Neither,” Neil says. He watches Andrew play with the knife, turning it over and over again in his hands, somehow avoiding the edge. “You know about my father. The Butcher of Baltimore. He liked knives.”

Andrew's fingers stop moving, but he doesn't say anything.

“If he was angry, or if a deal went wrong, or if he'd had a long day—” Neil traces the thin scars on the side of his face. Not from his father, but on his father's orders. “It wasn't a fun household to be part of.”

Andrew is staring at him—not his usual blank stare, something else. He's looking at Neil like he can see right into him, knows everything about him, understands him more intimately than Neil can understand himself. It's unnerving, but it's more comforting than it should be, too, Andrew steady and silent and scrutinizing, like a cardiovascular surgeon trying to figure out precisely which part of the heart to carve out. 

But then he looks away, puts his knife back in its sheath, and stands up. 

“It's cold,” he says.

“I have to tell you something,” Neil says. 

Andrew waits. 

“My father was Kengo Moriyama's right-hand man.”

“I know that,” Andrew says. Most people don't—Kevin would've told him.

“When my father died and I gave the FBI information on his people, Ichirou threatened to have me killed, but I had evidence that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life even if I was dead. We struck a deal.”

Andrew's hands are back at his armband knives.

“He was going to kill me, but I was playing well enough that people were already saying I might go pro. He agreed to take the majority of my income every year that I play in exchange for my life.”

“You are a Moriyama man in Kevin's apartment.” Andrew steps closer, drops into a squat so that he's on Neil's level. “In Kevin's space. Tell me why I shouldn't kill you.”

“I pay him in actual dollars, not actions,” Neil says. “Kill me if you want. It'd probably be a relief for the Moriyamas.”

“Ichirou owns you.”

“No,” Neil says. “He owns my career. Not me.”

Andrew considers him for a long moment.

“Do you really think I'd be able to work for them after I told the FBI everything about my father's activities?” Neil says. “I put twenty of the Butcher's people in federal prison. Those were Moriyama people, too.”

“No,” Andrew says after a pause. “You are too much of a junkie to sell Kevin out.”

It's true: the risk of not being able to practice with Kevin anymore would turn Neil off any concept of of betrayal. 

“My father would've killed me,” Neil says. “I didn't care about protecting his legacy. I didn't care about protecting the Moriyamas, either. I just did what I needed to in order to survive.”

Andrew doesn't look completely convinced.

“Look,” Neil says, gesturing to his face, “do you really think I'd want to be anything like the person who did this to me?”

“Show me the others.” 

Neil doesn't know why that should be enough for Andrew, and it's too cold out here to take his shirt off, but he gets the idea that he's not going to be allowed back inside if he doesn't give Andrew some reason to trust him right now. Neil unbuttons his coat and takes Andrew by the wrist, shoves Andrew's hand in the front of his shirt. 

“See?” Neil says.

Andrew moves his hand, feeling for the scars Neil promised, and is apparently satisfied, because his hand rests at Neil's shoulder where there's a wide, flat mark. Neil remembers the pain of an iron branding him like it just happened, the way his skin blistered instantly, his eyes flooding with tears, the heat of it, how his father didn't even seem to take pleasure from it, just some kind of cruel satisfaction—

“The Butcher did this,” Andrew says. “Nathan Wesninski.”

“Yes.”

“And you ran away.”

“After my tryout for the Ravens. My mother took me and left. I didn't understand what was happening until we were out of the country.”

Someone raps on the window behind them. Andrew takes his hand back and looks at Nicky, expression profoundly unbothered. He leaves his cigarette in the ash tray, opens the window, and climbs back inside.

“What's going on there?” Nicky says, raising an eyebrow.

“What do you mean?”

“What I _mean_ is that I had to promise not to touch you when you moved in, and here Andrew is, having his way with you! Extremely unfair, but Kevin owes me money on your sexuality.”

“No he doesn't,” Neil says. “I said I don't swing, and I meant it.”

“So you're telling me what I just witnessed was nonsexual?”

“How would that be sexual?” 

Nicky stares at Neil. “Really?”

“Really what?”

“I fully, like, just don't get you,” Nicky says, shaking his head. “Also, can you come back inside? It's freezing and your hair's still wet. You're going to get sick and Kevin will kill me. Not Andrew. Not you. Me. Come on, I'll make you cocoa.”

“I don't like sweets.”

“I'll make myself cocoa and you can have a glass of water.”

“Generous,” Neil says. 

“Hey, does the name Renee Walker mean anything to you?” Nicky says, actually getting Neil a glass of water and setting it down on the kitchen island while Neil climbs into one of the chairs.

Neil thinks back. “No. Should it?”

“She was sub goalie for the Foxes,” Nicky says. “And she's also Andrew's only friend. She's visiting from Africa for Thanksgiving and she's probably staying with us for the weekend, so. Head's up.”

“Just, like, Africa in general?”

“There you go again, cracking the jokes,” Nicky says. “No, I think she was doing Peace Corps stuff in Kenya. Since you're not settling any bets, maybe she will.”

“What does that mean?”

“The Foxes have been waiting for, like, years to see if she and Andrew will get together. For a while it wasn't a yes-or-no, it was like more of a when, like an over-under betting thing, but now we're all just betting on whether or not it'll actually happen or whether one or the other will find love in a different hopeless place. Not that Renee's hopeless, I mean, but, like—”

Neil tries to picture Andrew dating some peace-loving charity worker who used to also play in goal and gave up the sport. He fails. 

“What side are you on?”

“I mean, in college, I kept thinking it would happen and losing the over-unders, but since then, I don't know.” Nicky leans across the island with his cocoa in hand. “I've never seen Andrew hook up with _anyone_ , and I've known him since he was, like, actually a pubescent adolescent.” 

“Maybe he just didn't want you to know about it.”

Nicky sips from his cocoa and makes a face, then turns to the row of liquor bottles they keep on top of one of their cabinets—a spot neither Neil nor Andrew can actually reach. “It's possible. I mean, he's probably the most private person I know except for maybe one Neil Josten, but we've been living together this whole time. Don't you think I would know?”

“Not really,” Neil says, because Nicky still thinks Andrew killed his mother out of spite. 

“Such little faith.” Nicky spikes his cocoa with bourbon and offers some to Neil, who shakes his head. “Well, you'll let me know if you two ever do anything, right? Like, it's ridiculous that he's my cousin and I don't even know his sexuality, right?”

“Not everyone feels the need to announce it whenever they get laid,” Kevin says, sidling up to them just as Nicky's closed the bottle and snagging it for himself. He doesn't spike any cocoa, just pours bourbon into a glass and drinks it neat.

“Please,” Nicky says. “You're one to talk. Every time Thea's in town no one gets any sleep, and you know it.”

“You live here for free,” Kevin says. “A few sleepless nights will not kill you.”

“No, but Andrew might when I sneak into your room and murder both of you.”

“Good riddance,” Kevin says.

“What, you or me?”

Kevin pauses as if he's just fully comprehended what he said. “Both,” he decides. “She will be here this weekend.”

“Thanks for the advance notice,” Nicky says dryly. 

“I'm the landlord,” Kevin says. “I don't need to give you any notice.” 

“You're such an asshole,” Nicky says, rolling his eyes.

“Yes, but a generous one.” Kevin throws back the rest of his drink. “There are earplugs in the bathroom.” 

He wanders off, leaving Nicky glaring after him. Neil almost laughs. 

He really doesn't want to leave.

*

“I looked you up,” Neil says. “I didn't know you had endorsements in college.”

Andrew leans against the guardrail. “Money is money.”

“You're a Nike guy. I get paid by Adidas.”

“Don't tell them,” Andrew says, ashing his cigarette into a little brass ashtray. “You might get sued.”

“You think?” Neil says. Andrew's jokes always sound an inch too close to reality. His deadpan delivery doesn't help.

“I hope so. Maybe you'd be too busy with court dates to bother me.”

Neil grins and steals Andrew's cigarette to get his attention. “If you didn't want me to bother you, you'd tell me to leave.”

“Maybe if I expected you to stay gone,” Andrew says, turning to look at him. He tracks the path of his own cigarette up to Neil's mouth like he thinks Neil might mutilate it instead of just taking a drag. “You are like a cockroach.”

The word comes out on a puff of water vapor. Andrew looks cold, and it doesn't suit him, drying him out. It's hard to imagine that Andrew, with his heavy armbands and all-black wardrobe, would be more suited to summer, but he is. It makes sense that he's from California.

“Stop it,” Andrew says, and Neil realizes that he's just been staring. 

“Make me,” Neil says. He wonders how Andrew will do it—pushing him off the fire escape seems like it'd be an overreaction.

Andrew must think so, too, because he just pushes at the side of Neil's face with his fingers until Neil's head turns. Neil laughs at nothing; he thinks this is much easier now that there are no lies between them, even if the lie was only a lie by omission, harmless. 

He likes Andrew. He likes living here. 

He should leave, but he likes it here.

*

Working out with Kevin was helpful at first—Neil uses a heavy racquet and starts games regularly now, and it's obvious that it's mostly thanks to Kevin's drills that he's progressed this quickly—but now it just feels rote. Kevin is still the best ever, and Neil won't stop practicing with him until Kevin makes him, but still. Bouncing balls off the wall and into an empty goal will only produce results for so long. “Diminishing marginal returns,” Nicky called it.

“Nicky is right,” Kevin says, looking down at his watch. “You can only learn from the same drills for so long.”

“Do you know any others?”

“You can try to dispossess me, but you are a striker, not a backliner.”

“We need a goalie.”

“We have one,” Kevin says. “We just need him to show up.” 

Right on cue, the door creaks open and then slams shut again. Neil whirls around: they're supposed to be practicing in private. The door is supposed to be locked.

The person standing in the doorway is in full goalie gear, a helmet tucked under his arm, blank uninterested expression on his face.

“Andrew?” Neil says, bewildered.

“Finally,” Kevin says. “Get in the goal. Neil, practice until you get a shot past him.”

“I play professional exy, Kevin,” Neil says, but he gets in position anyway.

Andrew tilts his head at Neil at the challenge, and then he puts the helmet on.

Andrew is good. He's good enough to block most of Neil's shots at first, good enough that it doesn't even seem to bother him. He is everywhere, always, any time Neil aims and fires. 

“Tire him out,” Kevin calls from just behind Neil's shoulder. “He was too lazy and stupid to go pro, so—”

Andrew doesn't even look at Kevin, but Kevin turns out to be right. Andrew has natural talent and instinct but neither the stamina nor the technical skill to keep Neil's balls away from goal. Eventually, Neil gets ten past him in a row and Andrew stops, pulls his helmet off, looks at the net behind him. For a moment he looks shellshocked, but eventually he arches his eyebrow a minuscule amount and leans against the side of the goal, would-be casual, watching Kevin.

“See?” Kevin says. “ _See_?”

And Neil gets it suddenly, Kevin's claim that Andrew would've been the greatest goalkeeper of all time. If this is Andrew on no practice for the last two years, Neil almost shudders to think what Andrew would've been like if he'd cared. It would've been beautiful. A goalie with that kind of natural talent, with reflexes like those, who trained for eight hours a day and played the sport with passion. 

No one talks about the perfect court anymore, but if they did, Neil knows who their goalie would be.

“Yeah,” Neil says. His voice sounds funny.

“I'm going to shower,” Kevin says. “Clean up.” 

He might be storming off. Neil isn't watching, but Andrew is, blank stare following Kevin out the door. 

Neil moves closer, hooks his fingers into the netting of Andrew's racquet to get his attention.

“You're really, really good.”

Andrew looks at him coolly. “It is not a difficult sport.”

“You could be pro,” Neil says. Not just pro, Court. “You must have gotten offers. Why didn't you take them?”

“Didn't you hear Kevin? Lazy and stupid.”

“You know I know you're not either of those things.”

“Do I?” 

“Why didn't you want to go pro? And don't tell me you have some great passion for social work, because we both know you don't.”

Andrew doesn't dispute this, just gazes at Neil from under his helmet. 

“It annoyed Kevin more that I didn't,” he says eventually.

“You changed the course of your life based on what would annoy Kevin more, and then you followed him to New York anyway.”

“Looks that way.”

“How can you be so good at something and not care about it?”

“It was very easy.”

“Why didn't you go pro?” Neil says again.

“I found something less boring than exy,” Andrew says.

“Right, because for you, everything is always competing for that tiny fragment of attention span you still have.”

“You are just like Kevin,” Andrew says. “He took it personally, too.”

He wrenches his racquet away from Neil and leaves the gym.

*

Renee Walker is not at all what Neil expected, even after he spent an evening googling her and watching videos of her in the Foxes' goal (she's fine. Not good enough to go pro, nowhere near Andrew's level, but fine for what she was—a mid-tier goalie for a mid-tier team). She has bleached hair, but dark roots have grown out several inches, like she's been too busy saving the world to re-dye it. She has a tan, which is weird for late November. She's strong, but not strong the way exy players are strong, strong the way real world people who lift heavy things all the time are strong.

She also wears a cross necklace and a beatific smile that Neil does not trust at all.

“You must be Neil,” she says, arriving in the middle of the afternoon the day before Thanksgiving. Neil and Nicky are the only ones there, since social work doesn't stop early just because it's a holiday and Kevin's court is so much farther than Neil's. “I've heard a lot about you.”

Neil feels a little numb, but he knows his pulse must be speeding up. “Like what?”

Her smile stays put despite Neil's tone. “Well, Kevin seems to like you, which is rare.” 

“He does,” Nicky says. “You should see him talking about Neil's potential. Like, the kid already has a multimillion dollar contract, I don't think it's just potential anymore.”

“Maybe Kevin thinks Neil has the potential to be among the best,” Renee says.

“He's just an exy nut,” Neil says, and Andrew isn't around, so no one calls him on his hypocrisy. “Must be why Andrew likes you, right? Because you don't care about exy?”

“Of course I care about exy,” Renee says. “I played it for most of my life. I follow the L.A. Zephyrs, have you played them?”

“Yeah, the Bobcats lost by three goals I think,” Nicky says. “You should've seen Allison's check on Neil in the second half. I thought he wasn't going to get up.”

Neil remembers that game—the Zephyrs' defensive dealer did do a number on him. Kevin complained about how they could've seriously hurt Neil for Neil's entire flight back via a Facetime call that he made Neil get the expensive in-flight WiFi to have. Neil didn't know they were acquainted.

“You guys know her?” Neil says.

“Oh, yeah, she was Renee's roomie in college. Allison Reynolds, most vicious pretty girl you've ever seen. You didn't know?”

“I didn't even realize she was a girl,” Neil says. “I just know that check was illegal.”

“Yeah, and she got her yellow and you got your penalty shot,” Nicky says, waving a hand in the air. “Still lost. You going to go see her while you're here?”

“L.A. are playing the Leviathans on Tuesday,” Renee says. “I will see her then.”

“Ask her to get a drink with us. For old time's sake.”

Renee doesn't laugh, but there's something in her smile that suggests she might, a twitch and then an odd little twist. “I will.” 

Kevin gets in a few minutes later, gives Renee a polite hello, and then tells Neil to gear up for their afternoon practice.

“You don't take a break before those afternoon practices?” Nicky asks.

“My break is the commute,” Kevin says. “Not all of us live a five minute walk from court.”

“So Kevin has not changed,” Renee says, which annoys Neil for no reason—obviously she would know what Kevin is like if she played with him all through college. “Coach says hi.”

“I know,” Kevin says. “I spoke with him this morning.”

“Are you going down there for Thanksgiving?”

“He is coming here,” Kevin says, which is news to Neil. “He and Abby have a room in Williamsburg. He said he wanted to be as far away from our dysfunctional dorm room as possible.”

“That's Coach,” Nicky says, laughing. “Did you tell him he could stay at his son's house and it wouldn't be weird considering we all stayed at his place like a million times?”

“It did not come up,” Kevin says, and Neil really hates the odd scratchiness in his chest, so he goes to room to change and doesn't look back at them when he leaves.

*

Drills are a thousand times less interesting without Andrew there. Neil doesn't tell Kevin that, but it's obvious that Kevin knows Neil is thinking it, because he stops them thirty minutes early and sits down on the floor of the gym.

“He really won't play with you?” Neil says.

“He always hated it,” Kevin says. “I invested so much time in trying to get him to care, and he doesn't.”

“But he's so good.” Neil drops down next to Kevin, stares up at the bright gym lights until they burn. “How can someone who is so good at something not care about it?”

“I don't know,” Kevin says. “He isn't like us. He didn't have exy beaten into him.”

Us, Kevin says. Like he knows. 

“He would've been Court. I wanted him, you know. For the Ravens. Before I went to Palmetto. He turned me down.”

“What high school foster kid doesn't want to be a Raven?” 

“One who doesn't care.” Kevin sighs. “Dermott is fine.” Laila Dermott, starting goalie at Pittsburgh. “She is an asset to any team, and she will help us win at the Olympics in 2020.” 

In 2016, the U.S. crashed out early. Bad goalie. It's almost poetic. 

“So will you,” Kevin adds. “You are starting for the Bobcats after one season. You have netted an average of three point seven goals per game since the beginning of the season. If you have a good playoffs, you'll be on the team for the World Cup this summer. Not starting, of course—”

“Of course.”

“But you'll be in the squad. You're young, we're looking for talent that can carry us to the Olympic finals, there aren't a lot of good American strikers who haven't overstayed their welcomes.” He sighs. “Dermott is good.”

Neil barely hears him. He can see it now, himself standing next to Kevin with a medal around his neck. Gonzalez would be there, and Jeremy Knox. Knox would probably start with Kevin, and Neil would come on with some time left in the half, score a few goals. Matt on the backline—he's already gotten a phone call from Court. Jean Moreau, too, and Sara Alvarez. They'd win, he knows it. They'd win, and they'd get medals, and if Neil has to do it alone with a second-tier goalkeeper, then—

“She is good,” Neil says. “I scored on her pretty fast, though.”

Kevin huffs out a laugh. “Yeah,” he says. Three minutes into the first half, two weeks ago in Brooklyn. “You did.”

*

_hey lucia_

_sorry to bother you over thanksgiving_

_can you put me in touch with the housing people?_

_\- neil_

*

Neil spends Thanksgiving at Matt's mom's place in the Upper West Side like he has every year since his freshman year of college. She has it catered, and it feels more like a swanky party than a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but Neil prefers it—walking around means he can avoid people in a way he wouldn't be able to if they were all sitting around a dining room table.

Matt introduces him to people who tell him what big Bobcats fans they are—some of them even pay for boxes, which Neil has never seen—and ask him about the rest of the season. The Bobcats are the underdogs in New York, so they're the trendy team to support, and it's clear that Matt's mom's friends are very trendy people. “Take it away from the Leviathans,” more than one person tells Neil before getting a little drunker and asking him about Kevin Day.

Dan is there, too, laughing with Matt's mom about Matt like they've known each other for years, appearing intermittently at Neil's elbow to crack jokes about whoever it is they're about to come into contact with, getting drunk and draping an arm around Neil's shoulders and telling him how much she misses him.

“Come visit, then,” Neil tells her. She and Kevin would get along fantastically, he thinks. “You can meet Kevin Day.”

“I have it on good authority that he's a huge dick,” Dan says, and it takes Neil a minute to figure out that she's talking about his authority.

Later in the evening, Matt's mother hooks her arm through Neil's and tells Neil how much she misses him and wishes he'd come visit her (“After all, Brooklyn isn't _that_ far, and as I can't have my actual son—”). She's drunk but sincere, and Neil supposes that it's fair enough that he visit her considering he's spent Thanksgiving and Christmas at her apartment every year that he's known Matt.

It's a nice night. Neil even accepts Matt's offer and sleeps in a guest room, not wanting to take his chances with the subway back into Brooklyn that late on a holiday. 

It's nice. No one there is his actual family, and he doesn't really have any actual family left, but he has Matt and Dan, and Matt's mom likes him; and if he's a little jealous that an hour long ride on the G train away Kevin is having Thanksgiving dinner with a father who loves him and people who would actually die for him and sitting next to Andrew and Renee Walker, well. Neil's always been a little jealous of Kevin.

*

“So how is it all going?” Matt says over brunch the next morning; they're sitting at Matt's mother's kitchen table eating food Matt ordered in to avoid the flock of Black Friday shoppers. “Living with Kevin Day and the so-called monster?”

“Who calls him that?” Neil says, idly turning a potato over with his fork. 

“Some college sports gossip sites I found when I looked him up,” Matt says. “But really. How is it all going?”

“I don't know. I thought it was fine, but—” But what? It was just starting to feel homey, and now he feels uncomfortable every time he's there? He thought Andrew would kick him out, and Ichirou doesn't want him living there, and Kevin has helped him as much as he can without a goalie, and Andrew hasn't talked to him since he left the gym that night? “I might move out.”

“Like, get your own place?” Dan says. She exchanges a look with Matt. “You sure that's a good idea?”

“Okay.” Neil puts his fork down and looks up at them. “Why do you two think it'd be such a disaster for me to live alone?”

“Come on, Neil,” Dan says. “You know what you're like.”

“Hard-working and devoted?” 

“Obsessive,” Matt says. “Don't you remember your senior year, when you got yourself a single and didn't see anyone outside of practice and your strictly regular team bonding events?”

“What's wrong with that?” Neil says. “I was busy, and I still socialized.”

Dan rolls her eyes. “It doesn't count as socializing if you only do it so you'll have better chemistry with your teammates during games.”

“Like you aren't obsessed with exy.”

“I'm obsessed with exy, but I still have a life, Neil,” Dan says. “These guys are obviously good for you. I saw Facebook pictures of you at a party a couple of weeks ago. That guy Nicky is constantly tagging you in stuff, and you actually seem happy when you talk to us.”

“I just think—” Neil remembers that rumbling in his stomach when he met Renee. He doesn't know why it bothered him so much, but her presence in his living room made him feel immediately unwelcome there. 

And he gets it now, doesn't he? Why Andrew and Kevin can't get along? Neil thought they were friends, but every time Kevin looks at Andrew, he sees wasted potential. Which can't be fun for Andrew, who if nothing else seems satisfied with his choices. But he gets Kevin, too, because Andrew is so good it makes Neil ache to think about it. If he thinks about it for too long, he can see the three of them lifting Olympic gold together.

It's too much. It's just too much. It was better before, when it was just him and his team. It's impossible to get distracted when it's just you and your team, none of these extraneous relationships adding stress and complications. Neil doesn't have time to care about Andrew Minyard's wasted potential, or his relationship with his twin brother, or his wristbands, or anything about him at all, his smoking habit, how his hair gets all messy in the wind on the roof.

“Just think what?” Matt says.

“What?”

“You were saying you just think something.” Dan is looking at Neil like maybe he just grew a second head.

“Oh,” Neil says. “Right. Sorry, I got distracted.”

“So what's the deal?” Dan says. “You moving out, or what?”

“Yeah,” Neil says. “I think so. I just need to call my captain so she can hook me up with the housing people.”

“Well,” Dan says, turning to Matt. “At least he's capable of asking for help now.”

“New York really changed him,” Matt replies. “Alright, Neil. Let us know what you end up doing.”

“As long as you know we both think you should stay,” Dan says. “You seem happier now.”

“You must be misinterpreting my new stress wrinkles as laugh lines.”

Dan cackles. “See? College Neil never would've made that joke.”

Which, Neil thinks, is exactly the problem.

*

When Neil gets back to his own soon-to-be former apartment, everyone is—thankfully—still asleep.

He makes himself coffee and climbs up onto the roof to drink it and call Gonzalez, who hasn't emailed him back yet. Nicky mentioned something about shopping today, so eventually Neil will probably be dragged out, but for now, it's quiet except for Gonzalez's cheerful chirp as she connects him with the housing people. 

It's not long before he hears someone ascending the ladder. Neil leans back against the wall—the lounge chairs have been brought inside for winter—and waits.

“Hi,” Renee says. 

It's not who Neil was expecting, but he looks over at her. New York has had a warmish spell the last week or so, and any snow that was here before is gone now, but it's still cold out, and it's obvious from how she is curled into her coat that she's not used to it.

“Hi,” Neil says. He wishes she would leave. He likes this roof, and he wants to remember it like this, serene, or maybe with Andrew next to him.

“I think you don't like me very much.”

“I don't know you,” Neil says. “Why should I?”

“There's something you want to ask me, isn't there?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I made a bet with Andrew,” Renee says. “He thinks you'll ask me yourself, but I think you want me just to tell you.”

“You don't know me, either,” Neil says. “If I want to know something, I'll ask.”

“Then ask.”

Fuck it. He's moving anyway. “Nicky said everyone's betting on you,” Neil says. The Foxes make bets a lot, apparently. Nicky and Kevin and Andrew and Aaron. Renee. Allison, who checked Neil so badly he wanted to drown in an ice bath. “You and Andrew. Whether you'll get together or not.”

“They are,” Renee says. 

“Why haven't you? If you were going to be together—you've known each other for years. Why wait?”

“Neither of us is interested.”

“What does that mean?”

“I'm not Andrew's type, and he is not mine.”

“So?”

“Allison Reynolds,” Renee says. “You know who she is?”

“I think I still have a bruise from her.”

“She is my type,” Renee says. “And Andrew is gay. It was never going to happen.”

“That doesn't make any sense. Why doesn't anyone know about you and Allison?”

It's not the question Renee was expecting.

“She bet against Andrew and me. When she wins, we will split the profits.”

“How is she going to win when no one knows you're dating?” Neil says.

“When Andrew dates someone,” Renee says. “We can wait.”

“Andrew doesn't date.”

“Andrew is not public about dating.” Neil can't think of anyone who would fit the dating-Andrew bill from the last few months, except for maybe that bartender he saw once at the housewarming party. Still, seems unlikely. “Can we be friends, Neil?”

“I don't know you,” Neil says again. “I don't know yet.” 

And with any luck, he won't have to see her again. Housing services told him they could find him an apartment by the end of November. He won't even have to spend another holiday here.

“I'm not unlike you, you know.”

He believes her. Doesn't mean he trusts her. If anything, he might trust her less. 

“Let's go out tomorrow,” Renee says. “For dinner. Just you and me.”

“Careful,” Neil says. “They'll start betting on us, and odds will go down on you and Andrew.”

“I think it will be time to cash that out soon anyway.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing,” Renee says, giving Neil her irritating beatific smile. “Tomorrow? Dinner?”

“Sorry,” Neil says. “I'm busy tomorrow night.”

“Neil, I know you're just like Kevin.”

“Not just like him,” Neil says, standing up and brushing his hands off on his pants. “I have plans tomorrow that aren't related to exy.”

Renee gets up, too. “Can I ask what they are?” 

“I'm looking at apartments,” Neil says.

Renee's brows knit together. “You're moving.”

“Yeah,” Neil says.

“Why? You seem happy here.”

“You don't know me,” Neil says. “I think I'd be better off living alone.”

“Andrew seems to like you.”

“Andrew hates me,” Neil says. “He'll think it's a good thing.”

“You should talk to him first.”

“It's my life, Renee,” Neil says. “I'm sick of everyone telling me what to do.”

He can almost hear Dan making fun of him for that— _you sound so_ adult _, Neil_ —but he puts the thought out of his head and watches Renee take the ladder back down to their fire escape.

*

Neil tries not to dwell on anything Renee told him, nursing his freezing cup of coffee, staring out at the cityscape.

It's a nice view. He'll miss seeing the skyline from this angle. It looks different without smoke clouding it up.

It doesn't make any sense. Why would Andrew bet on Neil and Renee talking? Did he know Neil was annoyed? Did he know Neil was annoyed because of Renee, or did he think it was related to exy? Why does Renee think he should talk to Andrew before he moves? Why does everyone let Andrew have so much control over their lives? None of it makes any sense, and he needs answers.

Luckily, he lives with the one person who gives answers up readily.

He takes the stairs instead of the ladder down to their floor, pushes his damp shoes off in the doorway so Nicky doesn't get pissy, and half-jogs down the hall to knock on Andrew's door.

Andrew doesn't answer. Neil knocks again, harder, but instead of an answer, the door swings open.

Andrew's room is empty.

“What?”

It comes from behind Neil. Andrew is standing there, wearing his coat and holding a pack of cigarettes.

“I was just looking for you,” Neil says. Andrew is carrying a thermos, too, and a lighter. “Were you going to the roof?”

“Renee said you were up there.”

“I was,” Neil says. “I was coming down to find you.” He almost laughs. “You were looking for me.”

Andrew doesn't deny it, just watches Neil for a drawn out moment.

“I wanted to ask you something,” Neil says, just as Andrew says, “Are you leaving?”

“What?”

“Renee said you were moving out.”

“I am. I mean I—why did you tell Renee to tell me you were gay?”

Andrew blinks, and then he pushes past Neil into his room. He takes several careful steps back and waits for Neil to follow him in.

“Did I win, or did she?” Andrew says.

“Answer the question.”

“Maybe you were interested in her,” Andrew says. “You were very irritable with her.”

“And you wanted to facilitate a hook up for me?” Neil says. “I don't believe you. She could've just told me she was seeing someone else. Why tell me about you?”

Andrew looks at Neil like he has never seen anyone so stupid in his life. “You should ask her.”

“What?”

“She said you were planning to move out.”

“I am.”

“Why?”

“I—” Neil says, and then he can't find the words to explain it. What is he supposed to say? I ended up caring about all of you when I didn't mean to? I don't want to waste my time with this when—

But Andrew and Renee aren't dating, so why does he keep thinking about it being a waste?

“Don't go yet,” Andrew says, and looks surprised that he said it.

Neil stares at him, and it slots together before he can really figure out what it is he wants to say. Andrew coming to their game against the Timberwolves, Andrew pressing his hands against Neil's scars, Andrew playing in goal and putting apparently honest effort into it. Kevin and Nicky's surprise at all of it.

It feels abruptly like the floor Neil is standing on isn't much of a floor at all. He thinks he might be about to lose his balance, like the world has just come to a stop and no one noticed except for him. His body feels off the earth's axis. 

“You like me,” Neil says numbly.

“I don't like anybody,” Andrew corrects.

“Maybe not, but—you care about people.”

Andrew's expression doesn't change. “No, I don't.”

“Come on, Andrew. We've been living together for long enough for me to know that you don't lie. So don't start now.”

“I'm not lying.”

“Bullshit. You care about your brother or you wouldn't have killed someone for him, you care about Nicky, you care about Kevin—just because you have to express it through your fucked up little deals doesn't mean it's not there. It just means you—I don't know. You love quietly.”

Andrew blinks, and then suddenly looks vicious. Angry. For a second Neil thinks that maybe he's gone too far—he hasn't seen this much emotion on Andrew's face since he moved in—but then Andrew's expression shutters again.

“You don't know me.”

“You just told me not to leave,” Neil says. He thinks he might be smiling. “You like me.”

“I hate you.”

“Maybe,” Neil says. He is definitely smiling. 

Andrew glares at him. He still looks like he might stab Neil for suggesting that Andrew has anything like the capacity to love, but instead he says, “It doesn't matter.”

“Doesn't it?”

“It doesn't matter,” Andrew repeats, “to a man who doesn't swing.”

Neil has been on two dates in his life, and one of them was when he was young enough that it didn't count. The other was in college, with a cheerleader his team insisted he go out with since it was high time he date someone and anyway, he needed someone to bring to the fall banquet. The date was a disaster. Neil couldn't muster up the ability to care about a single word out of her mouth. 

He cares about the words out of Andrew's mouth, though. He cared when he thought Renee and Andrew might be a thing. He's cared enough to let Andrew carve him open and learn all his remaining secrets.

“What if I swung, but only one way?” Neil says. 

“Which way would that be?”

“What if it was just toward you?”

Andrew levels a cool glare at him. They're still in the doorway of his room; it feels intensely public, Neil's back to the hallway, where Nicky or Renee or Kevin could appear at any time. Andrew seems to have the realization at the same moment Neil does, because he takes several steps back and closes the door when Neil follows him in.

Neil has never been inside Andrew's room, only seen it in passing once or twice, stood in the doorway a few times. It's bigger than Neil's, but not by much. It features a bookshelf filled with drab looking books and a desk with a laptop open on it. And a bed, neatly made.

Andrew doesn't move away again, just stays like that, inches away from Neil like he's daring him to make a move. 

Don't shake his hand, Nicky said that first day. He doesn't like being touched.

Neil waits.

“Are you going to do it or not?” Andrew says.

“Nicky said you don't like being touched,” Neil says. “Is that in general, or do you not mind when it's on your terms?”

“What are you hoping for? Coordinates?”

“Yeah, maybe. That's not a bad idea.” 

“Everything about you is a bad idea.”

“I already know that.” Neil pauses, suddenly unsure. “Is that your answer? Bad idea?”

Andrew just looks at him.

“Andrew,” Neil says. “I want to kiss you. Yes or no?”

“You talk too much,” Andrew replies, and kisses him.

A thousand things run through Neil's head at once, _don't touch him_ and _you are like a cockroach_ and _what's going on there_ , Andrew always watching him, Andrew blocking Neil's shots like it was nothing, Andrew wishing for Neil's murder and claiming indifference to everything else. 

But then Andrew does something with his teeth, and Neil stops thinking, just lets Andrew shove him toward the bed. 

“I—” Andrew says, hesitant for the first time since Neil met him. “The bed. Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Neil says immediately, and allows himself to be pushed down. 

“Don't touch me,” Andrew reminds him, a careful hand on Neil's chest, and then they're kissing again, Neil's hands locked together above his head.  
And—Neil thinks later, standing in the shower with his forehead pressed against the wall, water running down the back of his neck—he'll miss that, too.

*

Neil doesn't think it'll happen again. Partly because he's moving, but also because Andrew told him to get out of his sight after, which is what Neil thinks about while he's following a broker up the stairs of another brownstone the next afternoon. The sensation of it is strange—the building is overheated and he's sweating by the third flight, but the outside of his face is still cold from the sleet outside. The broker keeps laughing at him.

The broker is trying to convince him to rent a two-bedroom, which is much too extravagant for Neil—“A studio is really enough, I'm trying to stay under budget.” “Don't be ridiculous, Neil, you have the budget for more space than that!”—so they've compromised on a one bedroom walkup. The building is old enough that it's almost cheap. Still over Neil's budget, but it won't bankrupt him, and he's starting to think that maybe this is what stability looks like. Maybe he doesn't have to keep looking over his shoulder; maybe the remains of his multimillion dollar contract are enough to pay for a space he actually likes.

“What do you think?” the broker says. “You like it?”

Something about it isn't quite right. The bedroom is roomy, living room and kitchen small, but it doesn't really matter since he doesn't cook and doesn't have anyone to entertain. The window to the fire escape has stops in it, but he thinks he could probably take them out. Not that he plans on keeping up the cigarette habit.

“Is there roof access?” Neil says.

“Suddenly you want amenities?” The broker rolls his eyes. For someone who gets giant commissions, he seems incredibly tired of Neil. Maybe because this is the fourth place they've been to today. “There is not, but that wasn't on your list of needs. Actually, the only thing on your list of needs was a bathroom and proximity to a park, which, in case you didn't know, is literally everywhere in Park Slope.”

“Are there any other places?”

“Can you tell me where you're leaning on this one?”

“I don't know,” Neil says. “It's big, but—” But what? It doesn't have roof access? Why should he care? “I'd just like to see other places.”

“For the record, you can always just move in the spring,” the broker says. “You're not going up to the roof in this, anyway, right?” He gestures out the window, where sleet is coming down hard.

“I kind of want to minimize the amount of moving I'm doing.”

The broker rolls his eyes, but obediently takes Neil to another place, only a few blocks away. This time, they take an elevator up to a wide studio in a high-rise, the kind Neil never would've found on Craigslist on his own. 

“Brand new appliances, everything's been renovated in the last five years, there's a gym downstairs, you get pool access,” the broker reads off. “Look at this: you get roof access, too. Perfect for you, right? And it's down the street from the Bobcats' gym.”

“It's nice,” Neil says, because it is. For a studio, it's roomy, but there's something that feels impersonal about it. “I don't love the décor.” 

He doesn't even sound like himself anymore. _I don't love the décor_. Jesus. He rubs at an eyebrow.

“We can fix that,” the broker says brusquely. “Just get an interior designer in here, they'll do everything up for you. We can even get you the guy Kevin Day used if that's what you're looking for.”

“What?”

“I mean, everyone knows you're moving out of his apartment,” the broker says. “Sorry, I didn't realize it was a secret. You guys fight or something?”

“No,” Neil says. “What?”

“Sorry, that's just—the rumor is that you two had some kind of a bust up, and that's why you're moving out of his apartment.”

“No,” Neil says. “That's not it. I just—I want my own space. I'm not really a roommate person.”

“Yeah, you don't really seem like one,” the broker says. “What do you think? We can get it decorated to suit your purposes. It has a gym, a pool, a beautiful roof—I can take you up there if you don't mind the cold—and it's under budget. We can put in the paperwork tonight and hopefully have you approved by tomorrow for move-in the first of December.”

“That's next week,” Neil says. 

“You said you wanted to move as soon as possible,” the broker says. “We could probably have found you better places if we'd had more time to look, but—”

“But I made you work on a Saturday, right,” Neil says. He looks outside. The weather really is disgusting. “Do you have the paperwork on you?”

The broker grins. He looks, Neil thinks, appropriately like a bobcat. “Of course I have the paperwork on me. You ready to sign?”

*

Neil gets home half an hour later and makes a beeline for Andrew's bedroom, only to find the door ajar and the room empty. Andrew isn't in any of the common spaces in the apartment, and he's not in Neil's room, either, though Neil doesn't know why he should be.

There is no way Andrew is outside. The sleet would prevent him from even lighting a cigarette.

Neil goes to check anyway. He takes the stairs two at a time, but the door out to the roof is locked and bolted, probably because of the storm, and a security camera perched over it looks like it's daring Neil to pick the lock.

It's extremely unlikely that Andrew took the fire escape stairs up from outside. They look dangerous in this weather, like whoever stepped on them would surely plummet to their death, and Andrew is scared of heights. Neil climbs out the window to check regardless, peering over the edge just to make sure Andrew's body isn't down there. 

Okay, fuck it. He's in weatherproof boots—this is what they were made for, right? If people hike Everest, he can get up these stairs.

It's a close thing—Everest isn't made of metal that gets slippery when wet—but Neil makes it up with only one or two near-death experiences.

Sure enough, there's Andrew, crouched under the overhang from the door that leads up here the legal way, smoking a cigarette like they aren't in the middle of an apocalyptic tempest.

“What are you doing up here?” Neil has to shout to be heard over the storm, and even then, Andrew barely acknowledges him. It doesn't matter. He needs to know. He pushes through the sleet until he gets to Andrew and settles next to him, soaked to the skin despite his giant coat.

“When are you moving?” Andrew says.

“I asked you first.”

“I'm smoking.”

“You know that's not what I mean.”

“If you want better answers, ask better questions,” Andrew says.

“Why are you up here smoking when you could be anywhere else doing the same thing without freezing to death? We all know you smoke out your window.”

“You don't get two questions.”

“You didn't answer my first one,” Neil says. “This is supposed to be an honesty game.”

“It's not a game,” Andrew says. 

“Okay, an honesty strategy. Better?”

“When are you moving?” Andrew says again. 

“Kind of depends on you,” Neil says. 

“Don't talk in riddles.”

“What, like you do?”

“I'm not like you,” Andrew says. “I don't lie.”

“Maybe, but you talk around the truth a lot.” 

Andrew doesn't say anything to that for a while. Neil assumes he's formulating some kind of biting reply until Andrew says, “Stay.”

“What?”

“Don't move out. Stay here.” 

Neil's emotional responses aren't trite or simple or cliched, so his heart doesn't leap. He doesn't feel butterflies or any of that. He just—smiles. “Why should I?”

“You know why.”

“Pretend I don't.”

“Because.” Andrew pulls Neil closer by the collar of his coat. “You like it here. You want to stay. This is your home.” 

His home. 

Neil says, “Yes or no?”

“Are you leaving?”

It's absurd that only a few hours ago, he thought he might. The broker looked annoyed when Neil told him he had to take the night to think about it; he'll be even more pissed once Neil tells him he's not moving after all. 

“No,” Neil says. 

Andrew kisses him before Neil can explain why—because he likes it here, this giant underpriced apartment with its TVs and exy-specific ESPN channels and well-stocked kitchen. He likes his roommates, likes Nicky and how he never shuts up, Kevin's well-meaning brusqueness, every little thing about Andrew. Andrew is right. 

Neil breaks away to say it: “You're right.”

“I'm always right.”

“Not always,” Neil says. “You said I had no preferences.” 

“I was right about that, too. The only thing you care about is exy. Everything else is—”

“This is a preference,” Neil says, gesturing between them. “Staying here is a preference. You—”

Andrew shuts him up with his mouth.

*

He stays. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering whether I picked “Leviathans” because I looked around the room and saw a copy of Hobbes' Leviathan on the table next to the TV, you're right.
> 
> Shouts to the dope big bang mods, [defractum](http://defractum.tumblr.com) and [amarulasmile](http://amarulasmile.tumblr.com/) for organizing this & smoothly handling what must be a super stressful & complex thing to organize! You guys are the best.
> 
> Also - giant giant giant thank you to [PuckB](http://coldcigarettes.tumblr.com) for pinch hitting when my artist dropped out! Their art is all infuckingcredible and if you've somehow made it this far into the AFTG fandom without seeing it, go check it out. 
> 
> Come talk to me on tumblr ([fandom](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com) | [main](http://osaudade.tumblr.com)). Please leave a comment if you enjoyed or spotted a typo!
> 
> also, here is a big version of the art so you can see the gorgeous detail: 


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